We are All Mahmoud Khalil

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The arrest of legal permanent U.S. resident Mahmoud Khalil, 29, by Department of Homeland Security agents for thought crimes is a shot across the bow of the American Constitution. All Fascist governments despise free speech, and the Trumpist regime is no exception. Khalil is only a test case. The Trumpists are coming for you.

Mahmoud Khalil helped lead a movement of college students at Columbia University demanding a cease fire in Gaza. Not only was this demand a perfectly reasonable exercise of his first amendment rights, it was the position of the US government in June 2024 when it presented a ceasefire resolution to the UN Security Council, which was passed. Advocating something in February 2024 that the US government actually did in June 2024 is not “aligning with Hamas” as the odious Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the even more odious Donald Trump alleged.

There is no evidence that Khalil, born in Algeria but of Palestinian heritage, committed any crime, as opposed to decrying the total war inflicted on Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, which the International Court of Justice found was plausibly a genocide, on the basis of which it issued a preliminary injunction (“provisional measures”) against Israel. Nor is decrying the actions of an extremist Israeli government “antisemitism,” as the DHS agents apparently alleged. People who condemn the far right government of Giorgia Meloni are not “anti-Italian.”

Just as a reminder, the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Not only is Khalil being targeted for constitutionally protected speech, but he is implicitly being punished for engaging in peaceable assembly in the form of nonviolent student protests on American university campuses, a right that university administrators are attempting to withdraw by the ruse of declaring such protests “trespassing,” which is in states like Michigan a felony. This ruse had previously been implemented by property developers such as owners of shopping malls, who also deep-sixed the Constitution on the grounds that such public spaces are actually private property. That current university presidents and trustees are attempting to turn the halls of learning where students live and learn into no more than a glib set of JC Penney emporia is a shameful derogation of their duty to train dynamic citizens with critical faculties.

“Constitution Chained,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2025

The Constitution does not limit these freedoms of speech and assembly to citizens, but talks about liberties of “all men” [i.e. all human beings]. In Shaughnessy v. United States (1952), the Supreme Court held that “once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders.”

Khalil’s unlawful detainment and false arrest is designed to make even citizens reluctant to criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the rogue’s gallery of deranged bigots in his cabinet such as Bezalel Smotrich. Smotrich not only wants to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians but he likened gay pride parades to bestiality and spoke out against women in the military as “weakening” it. In other words, he is a kindred to some of the more peculiar denizens of Washington, D.C., in the second Trump term.

It is not as if, of course, these political troglodytes actually care about the rights of Jews, and some of the more vocal critics of the Netanyahu regime have themselves been Jews. The far right now in power fantasizes about rich and powerful Jews like George Soros as puppet masters of society, in a sort of Protocols of the Elders of MAGA.

If we let Trump get away with this shameful attack on the free speech rights of Mahmoud Khalil, we will be opening the door to charges being laid against U.S. citizens of “alignment with Hamas” (or any other group Trump dislikes) and of “antisemitism” — for standing for equal human rights for Palestinians. We are all Mahmoud Khalil.