“Authorities have detained a co-founder of Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union as he was completing the final steps toward gaining U.S. citizenship in what appears to be part of a widening crackdown on college activists by the Trump administration.
Mohsen Mahdawi, who had permanent U.S. residency, was taken into custody Monday in Vermont when he went to a federal office building for a naturalization appointment, according to a legal filing his attorney submitted to block his transfer to a detention facility out of state.”
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““As a result of his speech he’s being detained, I mean it’s outrageous,” said Luna Droubi, an attorney for Mahdawi, who was raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank but has lived in the U.S. for a decade.”
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“Mahdawi appeared on “60 Minutes” in 2023 and was active in the Palestinian student protest movement at Columbia but says he had no role in organizing the largest and most raucous of the demonstrations in the following spring, according to his lawyer’s court filing.
He had finished his studies at Columbia and was planning to graduate in May and then return to the campus in the fall for a master’s degree. Mahdawi is a Buddhist and “believes in non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion,” the court filing said.”
“The triple-strike operation—featuring a hypersonic missile at Sdot Micha, a ballistic missile at Ben Gurion Airport, and a drone strike in Ashkelon—demonstrates a clear message of capability and intent from the Houthi military.”
The Trump administration are not free speech extremists.
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the State Department has revoked more than 300 student visas, as the Trump administration continues to detain and deport pro-Palestinian student activists at universities across the country.”
“The government now claims “he had willfully failed to disclose his membership in several organizations, including a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, when he applied to become a permanent U.S. resident last March,” reports The New York Times. “The government also said that Mr. Khalil failed to list his continuing employment with the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after 2022.” If these allegations are true, they may put the deportation on firmer footing: It is easier for the authorities to argue that the First Amendment isn’t a relevant factor when the issue is whether Khalil disclosed relevant information during a green card application.
But even if that is true, the Justice Department has shown its true motivation, even if it may be able to weasel out of the hole it’s dug. Since it told The Free Press that “the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law” and suggested that “he was mobilizing support for Hamas and spreading antisemitism in a way that is contrary to the foreign policy of the U.S.,” it sure seems obvious that it was Khalil’s role in the Columbia protests that attracted ICE agents initially. If officials can now find a better pretense to deport him, that may pass more legal muster, but they already made clear that this is retribution for protest. This will have a chilling effect on speech. And if they legitimately believed he was a threat, they should have actually spent the time to substantiate this.”
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“As for what actually happens to Khalil, it’s not clear these new allegations will make much of a difference: “In order to deport Mr. Khalil on the basis of the new allegations, the government would have to convince an immigration judge that any failure to disclose the relevant information was willful, and that it would have made a difference in his chances of receiving legal permanent residency status””
“Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, reported on Monday that he had been added by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to an encrypted Signal group chat with the White House’s principals committee to discuss U.S. war plans in Yemen. Goldberg received the first message at 11:44 a.m. on Saturday, March 15, and around two hours later, the White House announced a new air campaign against Houthi forces. The National Security Council confirmed the group chat was real and claimed Goldberg was added by accident.”
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“The constitutional and policy merits of war are two separate questions, but they’re impossible to fully disentangle. The point of asking Congress for a declaration of war is to allow the people’s representatives to weigh the pros and cons in a deliberate, transparent way. War is the most serious decision a government can make. Citizens of a republic should not have to perform Kremlinology—or wait for an official to fat-finger his contact list—to figure out what their leaders are planning.”