The Trump administration’s detention of a green-card holder who was a leader in the Columbia University protests against Israel has put a face on the debate over immigration and the limits of free speech, with a sympathetic twist: The man, Mahmoud Khalil, is married to an American, and they are expecting their first child next month.
The circumstances of the case have split the country in predictable ways and led to protests in support of Khalil, including one at Trump Tower that resulted in nearly a hundred arrests.
They have also given pause to some Republicans who fear the president has gone too far in seeking to deport a legal resident for doing and saying things that many U.S.-born college students did last year.
Others have expressed concern about the administration using artificial intelligence to identify people for potential deportation based on things they’ve said on social media.
President Donald Trump had heralded actions like this in January when he promised “forceful and unprecedented steps to combat anti-semitism,” including the deportation of Hamas sympathizers. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” Trump said in a Jan. 30 statement.
This week, the president said on Truth Social that Khalil’s arrest was “the first of many to come.”
Khalil was arrested Saturday in the lobby of his Columbia University-owned apartment building and has since been transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Louisiana. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing that Khalil distributed flyers in support of Hamas on campus and he has been determined to be “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.”
Khalil’s detention occurred the day after the Trump administration said it would cancel $400 million in grants and contracts awarded to Columbia University, which was the epicenter of student protests after the Israel-Hamas war began.
Khalil’s attorneys and supporters say that his activism is protected under the First Amendment. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that just as a visa or green card would be denied to anyone who said in advance that they were going to advocate on behalf of a terrorist organization, doing so after being in the U.S. opens them up to deportation.
“This is not about free speech. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card, by the way,” Rubio told reporters.
The case is complicated and will likely still be wending its way through the courts after Khalil’s son is born. Here’s what we know so far — and, just as importantly, what we don’t know.
How Khalil came to be in the United States
According to the BBC, Khalil was born in Syria to Palestinian parents. After leaving Syria at age 18, he earned a degree in computer science from the Lebanese American University.
It’s been widely reported that Khalil arrived in the U.S. in December 2022 and began classes at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs the next month. He married American citizen Noor Abdalla sometime in 2023 — the same year that Hamas invaded Israel and student protests broke out throughout the United States. He finished his studies at Columbia in December 2024 and was set to graduate with a master’s degree this spring.
In an interview with Reuters, Abdalla said she met her husband in Lebanon in 2016 through a volunteer program at a nonprofit where he worked. They had a long-distance relationship for seven years before getting married, she said. It’s unclear exactly when and where they were married, but their baby is due in April. In a statement, Abdalla, a dentist, has described her husband’s detention as a “kidnapping.”
According to the U.S. government, Khalil is a citizen of Algeria, although it’s unclear when or why he lived there. It’s also unclear how old he is — some sources give his age as 29, others as 30.
His public profile rose after Israel declared war on Hamas, and protests in support of Gaza and the Palestinian people broke out on campuses across the U.S. He told CNN last year that he did not participate in encampments because he was worried about his student visa being revoked. He did, however, give speeches and represented the Columbia protesters in discussions with the administration, and photographs of him were published in news outlets across the country.
A federal judge has blocked Khalil’s deportation — for now
At a hearing in Manhattan Wednesday, Khalil’s attorneys argued that he was wrongfully detained and he cannot be deported because he, like native-born Americans, has the right to free speech. “It simply cannot be the case that you can disappear at night off the streets of New York City simply because the current U.S. government, the current administration, the White House, dislikes what you have to say. That is not just un-American, it’s also unacceptable,” Ramzi Kassem, one of Khalil’s attorneys and a professor of law at City University of New York, told reporters outside the courthouse, per USA Today.
Khalil’s legal team is trying to get him returned to New York.
The nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has asked the Trump administration for clarification on the legal grounds for Khalil’s detention. In a letter to government officials, the group’s legislative and policy director, Carolyn Iodice, wrote, “The statements the government has released suggest its decision may be based on his constitutionally protected speech. This lack of clarity is chilling protected expression, as other permanent residents cannot know whether their lawful speech could be deemed to ‘align to’ a terrorist organization and jeopardize their immigration status.”
What are people saying about the Khalil case?
On social media, some people have applauded the arrest. In one viral video called “Why you deport me?” Canadian professor Gad Saad enacted a person seeking to come to the United States, complaining about the United States once he gets here and then tearfully questioning why he’s being deported.
Conservative CNN contributor Scott Jennings has forcefully defended the administration, saying that Khalil’s actions had contributed to Jewish students feeling unsafe. “Antisemitism is a scourge on the country,” he said, adding that Khalil is essentially a “guest” in this country and that if Khalil were a citizen, he might feel differently.
But journalist Robby Soave, writing for Reason, argued that the government’s case is weak. “Authorities must persuasively demonstrate that his conduct crosses some very, very red line,” Soave wrote. “Yet, at present, the government’s justifications don’t come anywhere close to satisfying such a requirement. On the contrary, the official explanation for Khalil’s detention is so woefully insufficient as to be laughable —except, of course, this matter isn’t funny at all.”
Can you be deported if you have a green card?
Green-card holders are not citizens of the U.S., but are “lawful permanent residents” who pay taxes and can qualify for Social Security benefits. That status, however, can be revoked under certain circumstances, such as leaving the United States for more than a year and committing a crime.
In addition, Gabriel J. Chin, a professor and immigration law scholar at the University of California, Davis, wrote for The Conversation, “U.S. law also provides that any non-citizen can be deported if the secretary of state and the attorney general jointly determine that the person is associated with terrorism, or poses a threat to the U.S.”
Khalil’s supporters point out that he has not been charged with any crime. But that’s not necessary to deport a green-card holder. There just has to be “reasonable grounds to believe they engaged in, or are likely to engage in, terrorist activities,” according to CBS News.
And while most green-card holders will never commit a crime or turn on America, occasionally that happens, as in the case of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who had both a green card and an American wife when he worked with his brother to set off two bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013.
What happens next?
As Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, wrote in his “One First” newsletter, “Lawyers representing Khalil have already filed a habeas petition in the Southern District of New York — where it has been assigned to Judge Jesse Furman. They’ve also filed a motion seeking Khalil’s return to New York for the duration of the litigation of his habeas petition. Although he hasn’t yet ruled on that motion, Judge Furman has already temporarily barred the government from removing Khalil from the United States pending further proceedings in his court.”
So some of the legal wrangling this week will simply involve whether Khalil has to stay in Louisiana or can return to New York as his case plays out.
And that’s just the beginning of the tangle of issues that await the court — and the country, Vladeck said.
“To spoil the punchline, although what the government has done to this point is profoundly disturbing, and is, in my view, unconstitutional retaliation for First Amendment-protected speech, I’m not sure it is as clearly unlawful as a lot of folks online have suggested. And that’s a pretty big problem all by itself.”
