President Donald Trump’s attempt to deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil marks one of Trump’s most egregious assaults on democratic liberties since taking office. Yet too many Democrats, particularly in party leadership, are responding to Trump in the most mealymouthed way possible. But this is a problem of Democrats’ own making: Their trepidation stems from their own history of repressing speech critical of Israel — and now we’re all at risk of paying the price for it.
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, is a green-card holder who finished a master’s program at Columbia University in December (he is expected to graduate in the spring). He played a leading role in activism on Columbia’s campus last year objecting to Israel’s brutal treatment of Gaza, and served as a representative of student activists in negotiations with the university administration over a divestment campaign. A Columbia professor recently described him as a “consummate diplomat” who “seeks mediated resolutions through speech and dialogue.” He has an 8-month pregnant wife, who is a U.S. citizen.
Democratic leaders’ response has been slow, divided and often feeble.
This legal permanent resident’s detention was made all the more disturbing by the way in which it was carried out. Khalil was detained in the lobby of his Columbia University-owned New York City apartment building on Saturday, with ICE agents changing their claims about his immigration status mid-arrest.
At first, the Trump administration provided no public legal explanation of its actions, even as it shipped Khalil to a detention facility in Louisiana. Green-card holders can be deported for certain crimes, but the government has not even charged Khalil with anything. Instead, the government is invoking an obscure provision of immigration law, which holds that an immigrant can be removed from the country if the U.S. secretary of state determines that their presence or activities are deemed to potentially have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” That’s why a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson has described Khalil as “aligned to Hamas.” But the administration has failed to provide any evidence or explanation for how this student activist is allegedly “aligned to Hamas” or poses a “serious” risk to U.S. foreign policy.
Instead, the Trump administration is targeting him for his political speech and activism — and openly admitting that his arrest is meant to scare other pro-Palestinian activists. On Truth Social, Trump called Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student“ and warned that his arrest is the “first arrest of many to come.” He added: “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”
Many civil liberties advocates, centrist and left-of-center observers recognize Khalil’s detention as an assault on free speech. Georgetown legal scholar Steve Vladeck said that the Trump administration’s actions constitute “unconstitutional retaliation for First Amendment-protected speech.” The organization Jewish Voice for Peace said Trump’s actions were “designed to sow terror among students and immigrant communities” and its protesters poured into Trump Tower in Manhattan chanting “Fight Nazis, not students.” Donna Lieberman, executive director of NYCLU, likened Khalil’s detention to “McCarthyism” and described it as a “targeted, retaliatory, and an extreme attack on his First Amendment rights.” Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, described Trump’s move as “the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world’s most repressive regimes.”
Some Democrats have risen to the occasion. “We must be extremely clear: This is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country,” said a letter from 14 progressive House Democrats. Another letter, signed by over 100 House Democrats, said Khalil’s detention represents “the playbook of authoritarians, not of elected officials in a democratic society who claim to be the champions of free speech.”
Yet Democratic leaders’ response has been slow, divided and often feeble. New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams have refused to weigh in. And the statements of both House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer illustrate how caveats and hedging can undermine clear communication and standing for principles.
Both Jeffries and Schumer’s statements begin with caveats referencing how Khalil may have violated Columbia University’s rules and his behavior may warrant disciplinary action from the college regarding how he may have made Jewish students feel. But Khalil’s status at the university is irrelevant. At stake is his status in the United States. Bringing up Columbia’s disciplinary system allows Jeffries and Schumer to distance themselves from Khalil’s political cause. But the entire point of defending the First Amendment is to defend people’s rights to say things that are unpopular or even loathsome. (Note that nobody has provided evidence of how Khalil, who has denounced antisemitism, is antisemitic, and that Khalil’s lawyers say there is no evidence he supports Hamas.) Both Jeffries’ and Schumer’s statements ask for the Trump administration to provide evidence of criminal activity in order to justify its actions. But that’s also a misfire: The Trump administration has made it crystal clear that this isn’t about criminal activity, but about political speech. A White House official even told The Free Press that “the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law.” Only after all the throat-clearing do the statements get around to saying that Trump’s actions appear to violate the Constitution in a measured tone. The reason the mainstream of the Democratic leaders have been weak on this issue is because the party has been long opposed to the issue that Khalil represents — cutting off aid to Israel — and complicit in the free speech crisis themselves. President Joe Biden maintained almost uninterrupted military aid Israel, even as human rights observers and scholars described it as a genocide, and effectively aligned himself with draconian crackdowns on overwhelmingly peaceful pro-Palestinian student protests. And most House Democrats voted in favor of a bill conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Moreover, across institutions with ostensibly liberal cultures — in media, book publishing, the film industry and elsewhere — voices critical of Israel have been stifled or even purged. Khalil’s detention may violate the First Amendment, but in the U.S. there remains a Palestine exception to free speech. If Democrats are wagering that this can be contained to one green-card holder, they are naive. Already Trump has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding to Columbia based on the pretext that it did not do enough to crack down on antisemitism. (This comes after Columbia expended immense resources to do so.) The message is clear: Trump wants to bully and intimidate as many institutions as possible to comply with its authoritarian assault on free speech. So far, Democratic leaders are not up for the fight.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy. 
