Mahmoud Khalil is a lawful permanent resident of the United States. But that has not stopped Donald Trump’s administration from threatening to remove him from the country, after federal law enforcement agents arrested him in New York and sent him to a detention facility in Louisiana, raising critical questions about First Amendment protections for green card holders.
Khalil, who was born in Syria, is a Palestinian graduate of Columbia University, and a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant.
He became the face of student-led pro-Palestine demonstrations at the New York campus and is accused by the Trump administration — and the president himself — of being a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student.”
Trump said his arrest is “the first of many.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio has threatened to revoke visas — as well as green cards — for “Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Khalil’s arrest has been widely condemned by Democratic officials and civil rights groups, questioning how a legal permanent resident could be deported, without facing any criminal charges, and without any evidence from the government of the allegations against him or any other demonstrators.
Green card holders ostensibly have the most protections among lawful permanent residents “short of a U.S. citizen,” Cornell Law School immigration law professor Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer told PBS.
But “immigration law does allow the federal government to deport noncitizens, even people who are green card holders,” over certain allegations, according to New York University law professor Adam Cox.
“The big open question is why the government thinks it can deport him,” he told NBC News.
Immigration law in the United States does not necessarily protect against deporting green card holders, and the government does not need evidence of criminality to remove them on allegations of fraud or for providing material support for terrorist groups, among other accusations — none of which the administration has provided any evidence Khalil committed.
“Material support for terrorism” under immigration law “is so broad that it can include cooking for a member of [a foreign terrorist organization], even at gunpoint,” according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council.
Attorneys for Khalil and civil rights groups argue he was targeted for protected speech in support of Palestinians, which is covered by the First Amendment.
“If our society remains attached to the rule of law, and if speech in the United States remains free, then no one should accept what happened to Mahmoud,” according to Ramzi Kassem, co-director of the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project, which is supporting Khalil’s case.
“The arrest, detention, and attempted deportation of a prominent Palestinian human rights activist for his constitutionally protected activity that the administration disagrees with is not only patently unlawful, it is a further dangerous step into modern-day McCarthyist repression,” said Baher Azmy, legal director with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is also supporting Khalil.
Rubio also appears to have invoked broad authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act that states that “an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Khalil’s arrest is “pursuant to Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism,” which the administration is broadly conflating with support for Palestinians while Israel, backed by the United States, leads an assault that, according to local health authorities, has killed more than 60,000 people in Gaza in the wake of Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” McLaughlin claimed.
Veteran New York civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby told NBC News that advocacy for Palestinians “cannot be construed as offering material support for a terrorist organization.”
“Whether you’re a green card holder or a citizen, you’re allowed to express your view that one country is right and another is wrong in an international conflict,” he said.“The message is that ICE can come take you away at any moment.”
Deportation proceedings for green card holders are carried out in immigration courts, not criminal ones. A judge, not the administration, will ultimately decide whether he can be removed.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the administration from deporting Khalil while his legal challenge plays out.
In court documents, Khalil accused the government of “open repression of student activism and political speech, specifically targeting students at Columbia University for criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza.”
The “U.S. government has made clear that they will use immigration enforcement as a tool to suppress that speech,” attorneys for Khalil wrote.
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