“In a previously unreported interview, Khalil also told Reason about his life story. “I was born in a refugee camp in southern Damascus. My grandparents were ethnically cleansed from Palestine in 1948,” he said. “They stayed in the closest camp to Palestine, and they lived and died in that refugee camp.”
As Syria fell into civil war, Khalil moved to neighboring Lebanon. He worked as a local manager for two British government programs, the Chevening Scholarship and the Conflict, Stability, and Security Fund, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2023, he enrolled in a master’s program at Columbia’s School of International Public Affairs.
Khalil told Reason that he was not worried about the political repercussions of being such a high-profile activist, because he wasn’t planning to go back to Lebanon and Syria. Nor was he worried about how it would affect his career prospects in America, because “I wouldn’t work for an institution that doesn’t value Palestinian lives. So if they don’t want to employ someone who is standing for Palestine, that’s my gain,” he said.
The prospect that he might be arrested by the U.S. government seemed so remote that it didn’t come up.
It’s not clear exactly which legal authorities the Trump administration used to revoke Khalil’s green card, nor how that will hold up in court. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”
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“”The Trump administration’s detention of Mahmoud Khalil—a green card holder studying in this country legally—is targeted, retaliatory, and an extreme attack on his First Amendment rights,” the New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman declared in a statement. “Ripping a student from their home, challenging their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint will chill student speech and advocacy across campus. Political speech should never be a basis of punishment, or lead to deportation.””
Trump paused tariffs on automobiles because big auto companies called him and convinced him to pause them. What about all those companies and consumers who do not have Trump’s ear?
“Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday accused Russia of planning a major terrorist campaign against aircraft.
“I can only confirm that Russia planned acts of air terror, not just against Poland but against airlines across the globe,” said Tusk during a meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The New York Times reported in recent days that U.S. intelligence warned the White House that Russia was planning to smuggle incendiary devices onto cargo planes heading to the U.S. The White House, according to the Times, warned the Kremlin to stop the operation.”
“The new Trump administration is “designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations” as part of a crackdown on drug trafficking across the U.S.-Mexican border, President Donald Trump said during his inauguration speech on Monday.
Trump also promised “to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gang criminal networks” through the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the government to round up foreigners who are citizens of a country that Congress has declared war on or that is engaged in an “invasion or predatory incursion.””
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“”Because the cartels are so closely intertwined with legitimate businesses (in mafioso-like protection rackets), many people are forced to pay them off or be killed. Under US law, that could count as material support to terrorism,” writes attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the nonprofit American Immigration Council.
Ironically, immigration hawks worry that a terrorist designation might make it easier for Mexicans to come to the United States as refugees, since they can claim they are fleeing terrorism.”
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“Even though terrorism designations are not legally a declaration of war, they might make it politically easier to send U.S. troops to Mexico—which Trump’s advisers have said he wants to do—without asking Congress.”
“The same ceasefire agreement was almost signed in May 2024. Instead, the pointless violence continued for several more months—at Americans’ expense.”
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“Hundreds of Israeli troops have died since May 2024, as well as several Israeli hostages who would have been released under this week’s deal, including at least one American. Hamas has nearly recovered from its military losses by recruiting new fighters, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared in his farewell speech on Tuesday. As Israeli troops withdraw, Hamas fighters will once again be in charge of Gaza.”
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“Hamas will rule over a traumatized population living in bombed-out wreckage. The dead have still not been properly counted; the official death toll of 46,600 may have missed 40 percent of violent deaths, and it doesn’t include deaths from starvation and disease. Back in May 2024, the United Nations estimated that rebuilding Gaza would take decades and cost $50 billion, money that will not be forthcoming to any Hamas-led government.”
Did all the death and destruction wrought by Israel trying to get Hamas achieve anything? If Gaza is still ruled by a terrorist organization, won’t it just rebuild, then attack Israel, and this happens all over again?
“The attacker, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran from Texas, rammed a truck into Bourbon Street before he was killed in a shootout with police. Jabbar was flying an ISIS flag from his vehicle and posted videos on Facebook shortly before the attack, pledging support to the group.
In a briefing on Thursday, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia described Jabbar as “100 percent inspired by ISIS.” Raia said that Jabbar, who had also planted two explosive devices on Bourbon Street that never went off, claimed he had joined ISIS before last summer. In his videos, Jabbar said he had originally planned to attack his relatives and friends — he had recently gone through a divorce — but worried that media coverage would not focus on what he called the “war between the believers and disbelievers.” Authorities are also investigating whether there is any link between the attack and a truck bombing that took place outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas on the same day, though for now there does not appear to be.
Using trucks and vans to ram into crowds has been a staple of deadly ISIS-linked attacks for years, from Nice, France, to Barcelona, to Berlin, to Stockholm. New Orleans is likely the biggest ISIS-inspired attack on US soil since 2016, when gunman Omar Mateen killed 49 people at Pulse, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The last significant ISIS-inspired attack in the US was in 2017, when Sayfullo Saipov drove a truck onto Manhattan’s West Side Highway, killing eight people.
ISIS-linked violence is still common around the world — there was a major suicide attack on a military base in Somalia just this week. The group’s Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-K, has been particularly ambitious and global in its activities. It carried out an attack on Moscow’s Crocus theater that killed more than 130 people last March, as well as the suicide bombings that killed nearly 100 people in Tehran in January 2024. In August, authorities foiled a “quite advanced” ISIS-K plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Austria.
The fact that there hadn’t been any recent ISIS-inspired attacks in the US in recent years may not be from lack of trying. Aaron Y. Zelin, who researches and tracks jihadist groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, notes that there were five arrests for ISIS-related plots in the US in 2024, including attempts to “target churches in Idaho, LGBTQ ‘establishments’ in Philadelphia, Jewish centers/synagogues in New York City, election day voting locations in Oklahoma City, and a Pride parade in Phoenix.” That’s up from zero arrests of this type in 2023.
The fact that one of the group’s self-acknowledged acolytes has now succeeded to deadly and tragic effect raises some tough questions about whether ISIS is primed for a resurgence, and what it actually means to be “ISIS-affiliated” today.”
“The New Orleans attacker who killed 14 people by ramming a pickup truck into a crowd built two bombs with a “very rare explosive compound”, senior law enforcement officials have said.
The compound had never before been used in a US or European terror attack, with investigators now exploring how attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar learnt how to produce the explosive.
Jabbar used the compound in two homemade bombs, which were found in coolers on Bourbon Street, where he carried out his deadly attack on New Year’s Day. The bombs did not detonate and it remains unclear whether this was due to a malfunction or lack of activation.”
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“Jabbar, a US citizen born in Texas and a former army soldier, had posted several social media messages saying he was inspired by the Islamic State militant group.
He had been living in a trailer on the outskirts of Houston before driving to Louisiana to carry out the attack, and was shot dead in a firefight with police at the scene.
The FBI has concluded that no one helped Jabbar to carry out his attack.”