ICE Emerges as Trump's Gestapo
The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil highlights an underlying truth: It was never about the law.
The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, that is, a legal permanent resident of the United States, represents the de facto unmasking of ICE as Trump’s gestapo. It was never about upholding the rule of law. It was about doing Trump’s bidding and quashing dissident voices.
On Saturday, ICE arrested and detained Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and a pro-Palestine activist. What crime has he committed? None. No specific charges have been filed. The arrest is the fulfillment of Trump’s recent executive orders, confirmed by a Truth Social post yesterday:
“Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come…We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
A White House fact sheet published on January 30 summarizes the intent of the EOs:
“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.”
Notice the language. Pro-jihadist. Terrorist sympathizer. Radicalism. Trump uses language to discredit anyone with the temerity to have an opinion that runs counter to the public stance of his administration. If all Palestinians are terrorists, supporting the liberation of Palestine is tantamount to supporting a terrorist organization, in Trump’s worldview, effectively outlawing the support of Palestine. He employs a similar strategy with noncitizens and migrants by calling them all criminals.
Khalil is a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestine coalition that has been accused of anti-Semitism and sympathizing with Hamas and Hezbollah. I’ll let them speak for themselves. This is their mission in their own words:
“Columbia University Apartheid Divest is a coalition of student organizations working toward achieving a liberated Palestine and the end of Israeli apartheid by urging Columbia to divest all economic and academic stakes in Israel. We seek an end to all interlocking systems of oppression through collective action and solidarity with oppressed people worldwide.”
This doesn’t sound like terrorist sympathizing to me, but perhaps members of this coalition have expressed some dubious opinions in the past. What troubles me infinitely more, however, is painting the entire pro-Palestine movement with the same brush in order to silence them with the threat of deportation.
Khalil hasn’t been charged with any crime, let alone terrorist activity, but, as PBS reports, “…experts say the federal government has fairly broad authority to arrest and try to deport a green card holder on terrorism grounds.”
The U.S. isn’t a full-blown autocracy just yet, but as I pointed out in my last post, autocracies don’t typically spring up overnight. Democracies erode over time. Autocrats often target the most vulnerable first, as in undocumented immigrants, before graduating to another group with more recourse, such as, say, green card holders. Every time an autocrat gets away with persecuting a group, they’re emboldened, paving the way for the next, more egregious overreach. One has to wonder who might be next.
A federal judge in New York has blocked the deportation of Khalil, preventing his summary removal—a win for due process—and staying our slide into autocracy, but for how long?
They will start grabbing democrats soon. Of course this will be by accident right? And when I say that I mean dems from grassroots orgs. Dems who fight for election rights, civil rights, basically anything positive for Americans.