The family of Mahmoud Khalil released a video of his March 8, 2025 arrest by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents in New York City. (Photo: screen grab/Family of Mahmoud Khalil)
Khalil’s wife said that “officers in plain clothes—who refused to show us a warrant, speak with our attorney, or even tell us their names—forced my husband into an unmarked car and took him away from me.”
The family of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States now at risk of deportation because he helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last spring, on Friday released a video of his recent arrest by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents in New York City, which has sparked legal battles and protests.
“You’re watching the most terrifying moment of my life,” Khalil’s wife, Noor, said in a statement about the two-minute video. “This felt like a kidnapping because it was: Officers in plain clothes—who refused to show us a warrant, speak with our attorney, or even tell us their names—forced my husband into an unmarked car and took him away from me.”
“Everyone should be alarmed and urgently calling for the freedom of Mahmoud and all other students under attack for their advocacy for Palestinian human rights.”
“They threatened to take me too, even though we were calm and fully cooperating. For the next 38 hours after this video, neither I or our lawyers knew where Mahmoud was being held. Now, he’s over 1,000 miles from home, still being wrongfully detained by U.S. immigration,” said Noor, whose husband is detained at a facility in Jena, Louisiana.
Noor, who is eight months pregnant, noted that “Mahmoud has repeatedly warned of growing threats from Columbia University and the U.S. government unjustly targeting students who want to see an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Now, the Trump administration and DHS are targeting him, and other students too.”
“Mahmoud is clearly the first of many to be illegally repressed for their speech in support of Palestinian rights,” she added. “Everyone should be alarmed and urgently calling for the freedom of Mahmoud and all other students under attack for their advocacy for Palestinian human rights.”
BREAKING: Family of Mahmoud Khalil releases footage from the night of his arrest.
Make no mistake: This is federal agents in plainclothes dragging a man from his home as punishment for his constitutionally protected speech. pic.twitter.com/X7JVQyAzrm
— The CCR is on bsky (@ccrjustice.org) (@theCCR) March 14, 2025
Khalil, who finished his graduate studies at Columbia in December, is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent. He was living in the United States with a green card until his arrest on Saturday. In response to a filing by his legal team—which includes Amy Greer from Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project—a judge has temporarily blocked his deportation.
The ACLU and its New York arm have joined Khalil’s legal team, and his attorneys filed an amended petition and complaint on Thursday. NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman said that with the new “filing, we are making it crystal clear that no president can arrest, detain, or deport anyone for disagreeing with the government. The Trump administration has selectively targeted Mr. Khalil, a student, husband, and father-to-be who has not been accused of a single crime, to send a message of just how far they will go to crack down on dissent.”
“But we at the NYCLU and ACLU won’t stand for it—under the Constitution, the Trump administration has no basis to continue this cruel weaponization of Mr. Khalil’s life,” Lieberman added. “The court must release Mr. Khalil immediately and let him go home to his family in New York, where he belongs. Ideas are not illegal, and dissent is not grounds for deportation.”
Samah Sisay of CCR reiterated those messages as the arrest video circulated on Friday, saying that “Mr. Khalil was taken by plainclothes DHS agents in front of his pregnant wife without any legal justification. Mr. Khalil must be freed because the government cannot use these coercive tactics to unlawfully suppress his First Amendment protected speech in support of Palestinian rights.”
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One after signing a proclamation renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on February 9, 2025. (Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)
“It’s at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership,” asserted one campaigner.
First Amendment defenders are calling on media organizations and journalists to stand up to bullying and intimidation by U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration on Friday confirmed the indefinite exclusion of one of the world’s largest news agencies from White House press briefings and Air Force One flights over its refusal to adopt the Republican leader’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich said that because The Associated Press “continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change” of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it will be indefinitely banned from White House news conferences and the president’s official airplane.
“The level of pettiness displayed by the White House is so incredible that it almost hides the gravity of the situation.”
The New York-based AP, which provides news content to roughly 15,000 media outlets in over 100 countries, has explained that, because the gulf is an international body of water, it will continue to call it the Gulf of Mexico because Mexico—whose president on Thursday threatened to sue Google for adopting Trump’s name change—and other countries do not recognize the new name.
In contrast, the AP said it will call Denali, the highest peak in North America, Mt. McKinley following a name change by Trump because the Alaska mountain is located entirely inside the United States.
Budowich said the AP‘s decision on the Gulf of Mexico exposes the agency’s “commitment to misinformation.”
“While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces,” he argued.
But critics said the Trump administration’s behavior is about a lot more than just a spat over a name change.
“Of course, this is just more petty behavior by a president seeking to punish any news organization that doesn’t follow his dictates, regardless of how ridiculous they may be,” Timothy Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press, told Common Dreams on Friday.
“It’s at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership,” Karr stressed. “They need to advocate for themselves, their colleagues, and for journalism writ large.”
“The good news is that more than a dozen of the mass market news outlets have refused to adopt Trump’s name change for the Gulf of Mexico,” he added. “That’s a start. They now need to speak out against his First Amendment threats, despite the consequences. There is much more at stake now than just having access to the White House.”
“By defying Trump, the AP has created a rallying point for other organizations and individuals to find their spines and defy him as well.”
Writing for Public Notice Friday, Noah Berlatsky commended the AP for “not changing their style to suit the whims of a would-be tin-pot dictator.”
“And by defying Trump, the AP has created a rallying point for other organizations and individuals to find their spines and defy him as well,” Berlatsky added.
“The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions,” WHCA president Eugene Daniels said earlier this week.
RSF USA executive director Clayton Weimers said in a statement that “the level of pettiness displayed by the White House is so incredible that it almost hides the gravity of the situation.”
“A sitting president is punishing a major news outlet for its constitutionally protected choice of words,” Weimers added. “Donald Trump has been trampling over press freedom since his first day in office.”
President Trump banning the Associated Press from an event over their usage of "Gulf of Mexico" instead of "Gulf of America" may seem more absurd than alarming, but Trump's attacks on the free press are no joke.
Numerous experts highlighted what they called the unconstitutionality of banning a media outlet from press briefings for political reasons.
“The AP—a major news agency that produces and distributes reports to thousands of newspapers, radio stations, and TV broadcasters around the world—has had long-standing access to the White House,” Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wrote on Friday.
“It is now losing that access because its exercise of editorial discretion doesn’t align with the administration’s preferred messaging,” Terr added. “That’s viewpoint discrimination, and it’s unconstitutional.”
Berlatsky wrote: “As ABC, Meta, the LA Times, The Washington Post, and Google demonstrate, you lose 100% of the fights you preemptively and despicably surrender. The AP has already won an important victory by refusing to change the Gulf of Mexico to some random other name at the whim of a power-mad orange gasbag.”
“If any portion of Trump’s agenda is to be stopped, we need people and organizations who are willing to defy him and speak truths he doesn’t want to hear,” he added. “Despite Trump, the AP still calls the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico. In doing so, it’s reminding us what freedom looks like. It’s also demonstrating us that if you don’t want to lose your freedoms, you have to use them.”
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
With the encouragement of the state, universities from coast to coast are taking draconian steps to silence debate about US-backed violence in the Middle East.
The Columbia University community looked on in shock as cops in riot gear arrested at least 100 pro-Palestine protesters who had set up an encampment in the center of campus (New York Post, 4/18/24). The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, had just the day before testified before a Republican-dominated congressional committee ostensibly concerned with campus “antisemitism”—a label that has come to be misapplied to any criticism of Israel, though the critics so smeared are often themselves Jewish.
The New York Post (4/18/24) was also pleased that Google had fired 28 employees for protesting genocide.
A sense of delight has filled the city’s opinion pages. The New York Post editorial board (4/18/24) hailed both the clampdown on protests and Congress’s push to ensure that such drastic action against free speech was taken: “We’re glad to see Shafik stand up…. Congress deserves some credit for putting educrats’ feet to the fire on this issue.” The paper added, “Academia has been handling anti-Israel demonstrations with kid gloves.” In other words, universities have been allowing too many people to think and speak critically about an important issue of the day.
In “At Columbia, the Grown-Ups in the Room Take a Stand,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul (4/18/24) hailed the eviction, saying of the encampment that for the “passer-by, the fury and self-righteous sentiment on display was chilling,” and that for supporters of Israel, “it must be unimaginably painful.” In other words, conservative pundits have decided that campus safe spaces where speech is banned to protect the feelings of listeners are good, depending on the issue. Would Paul (no relation!) favor bans on pro-Taiwan or pro-Armenia demonstrations because they could offend Chinese and Turkish students?
And for Michael Oren, a prominent Israeli politico, Columbia students hadn’t suffered enough. He said of Columbia in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (4/19/24):
Missing was an admission of the university’s failure to enforce the measures it had enacted to protect its Jewish community. [Shafik] didn’t address how, under the banner of free speech, Columbia became inhospitable to Jews. She didn’t acknowledge how incendiary demonstrations such as the encampment were the product of the university’s inaction.
Shafik had assured her congressional interrogators that Columbia had already suspended 15 students for speaking out for Palestinian human rights, suspended two student groups—Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/10/23)—and had even terminated an instructor (New York Times, 4/17/24).
The hearing was bizarre, to say the least; a Georgia Republican asked the president if she wanted her campus to be “cursed by God” (New York Times, 4/18/24). (“Definitely not,” was her response.)
The former World Bank economist had clearly been shaken after seeing how congressional McCarthyism ousted two other female Ivy League presidents (FAIR.org, 12/12/23; Al Jazeera, 1/2/24).
‘Protected from having to hear’
Twenty-three Jewish faculty members at Columbia published a joint op-ed (Columbia Spectator, 4/10/24) reminding President Shafik that “labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity.”
“What happened at those hearings yesterday should be of grave concern to everybody, regardless of their feelings on Palestine, regardless of their politics,” Barnard College women’s studies professor Rebecca Jordan-Young told Democracy Now! (4/18/24). “What happened yesterday was a demonstration of the growing and intensifying attack on liberal education writ large.”
Her colleague, historian Nara Milanich, said in the same interview:
This is not about antisemitism so much as attacking areas of inquiry and teaching, whether it’s about voting rights or vaccine safety or climate change — right?—arenas of inquiry that are uncomfortable or inconvenient or controversial for certain groups. And so, this is essentially what we’re seeing, antisemitism being weaponized in a broad attack on the university.
Jewish faculty at Columbia spoke out against the callous misuse of antisemitism to silence students, but those in power aren’t listening (Columbia Spectator, 4/10/24).
Shafik justified authorizing the mass arrests, which many said hadn’t been seen on campus since the anti-Vietnam War protests of 1968. “The individuals who established the encampment violated a long list of rules and policies,” she said (BBC, 4/18/24). “Through direct conversations and in writing, the university provided multiple notices of these violations.”
One policy suggested by the university’s “antisemitism task force,” according to a university trustee who also testified (New York Times, 4/18/24): “If you are going to chant, it should only be in a certain place, so that people who don’t want to hear it are protected from having to hear it.”
Cross-country rollback
USC valedictorian Asna Tabassum says the school did not tell her what the security threats were, but said that the precautions that would be necessary to allow her to speak were “not what the university wants to ‘present as an image’” (Reuters, 4/18/24).
Meanwhile, the University of Southern California canceled the planned graduation speech by valedictorian Asna Tabassum—a Muslim woman who had spoken out for Palestine (Reuters, 4/18/24). The university cited unnamed “security risks”; The Hill (4/16/24) noted that “she had links to pro-Palestinian sites on her social media.” Andrew T. Guzman, the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, said in a statement that cancelation was “consistent with the fundamental legal obligation—including the expectations of federal regulators—that universities act to protect students and keep our campus community safe” (USC Annenberg Media, 4/15/24).
This is happening as academic freedom is being rolled back across the country. Republicans in Indiana recently passed a law to allow a politically appointed board to deny or even revoke university professors’ tenure if the board feels their classes lack “intellectual diversity”—at the same time that it threatens them if they seem “likely” to “subject students to political or ideological views and opinions” deemed unrelated to their courses (Inside Higher Ed, 2/21/24).
Benjamin Balthaser, associate professor of English at Indiana University South Bend, told FAIR in regard to the congressional hearing:
There is no other definition of bigotry or racism that equates criticism of a state, even withering, hostile criticism, with an entire ethnic or religious group, especially a state engaging in ongoing, documented war crimes and crimes against humanity. Added to this absurdity is the fact that many of the accused are not only Jewish, but have strong ties to their Jewish communities. To make such an equation assumes a collective or group homogeneity which is itself a form of essentialism, even racism itself: People are not reducible to the crimes of their state, let alone a state thousands of miles away to which most Jews are not citizens.
Of course, witch hunts against leftists in US society are often motivated by antisemitism. Balthaser again:
The far right has long deployed antisemitism as a weapon of censorship and repression, associating Jewishness with Communism and subversion during the First and Second Red Scares. Not only did earlier forms of McCarthyism overwhelmingly target Jews (Jews were two-thirds of the “defendants” called before HUAC in 1952, despite being less than 2% of the US population), it did so while cynically pretending to protect Jews from Communism. Something very similar is occurring now: Mobilizing a racist trope of Jewish adherence to Israel, far-right politicians are using accusations of antisemitism to both silence criticism of Israel and, in doing so, promote their antisemitic ideas of Jewishness in the world.
Silencing for ‘free speech’
The darker blue states have passed restrictions aimed at Critical Race Theory; in the lighter blue states, proposed restrictions have not been adopted (CRT Forward).
These universities are not simply clamping down on free speech because the administrators dislike this particular speech, or out of fear that pro-Palestine demonstrations or vocal faculty members could scare donors from writing big checks. This is a result of state actors—congressional Republicans, in particular—who are using their committee power and sycophants in the media to demand more firings, more suspensions, more censorship.
I have written for years (FAIR.org, 10/23/20, 11/17/21, 3/25/22), as have many others, that Republican complaints about “cancel culture” on campus suppressing free speech are exaggerated. One of the biggest hypocrisies is that so-called free-speech conservatives claim that campus activists are silencing conservatives, but have little to say about blatant censorship and political firings when it comes to Palestine.
This isn’t a mere moral inconsistency. This is the anti-woke agenda at work: When criticism of the right is deemed to be the major threat to free speech, it’s a short step to enlisting the state to “protect” free speech by silencing the critics—in this case, dissenters against US support for Israeli militarism.
But this isn’t just about Palestine; crackdowns against pro-Palestine protests are part of a broader war against discourse and thought. The right has already paved the way for assaults on educational freedom with bans aimed at Critical Race Theory adopted in 29 states.
If the state can now stifle and punish speech against the murder of civilians in Gaza, what’s next? With another congressional committee investigating so-called infiltration by China’s Communist Party, will Chinese political scholars be targeted next (Reuters, 2/28/24)? With state laws against environmental protests proliferating (Sierra, 9/17/23), will there be a new McCarthyism against climate scientists? (Author Will Potter raised the alarm about a “green scare” more than a decade ago—People’s World, 9/26/11; CounterSpin, 2/1/13.)
Universities and the press are supposed to be places where we can freely discuss the issues of the day, even if that means having to hear opinions that might be hard for some to digest. Without those arenas for free thought, our First Amendment rights mean very little. If anyone who claims to be a free speech absolutist isn’t citing a government-led war against free speech and assembly on campuses as their No. 1 concern in the United States right now, they’re a fraud.
