Mahmoud Khalil’s Kidnapping is Nothing New

Its an expansion of existing ICE tactics against activists and advocates

Ravi Ragbir speaking at a rally. Photo courtesy of NYCLU.

Earlier this week, Jess wrote a fantastic article on the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University student and a Palestinian activist. In it, she covered all the ways in which Khalil’s arrest was a violation of free speech, in which it went against everything we know about our immigration laws, our First Amendment rights, all the ways in which this case is unique and terrifying. But as a long-time immigration activist, I know that there’s nothing new under the sun—that the tactics used against Khalil are yes, a terrifying expansion of the Executive powers, but also an escalation that follows an existing pattern.

This story particularly keeps running through my brain not just because it is terrifying, but because it is familiar. I graduated from Columbia University in 2015. I participated in protests on campus—and watched as the administration took radical actions against student speech. In 2013, I was kettled by the NYPD, hundreds of us trapped on one block just off campus during the non-indictment protests for Trayvon Martin’s murderer—cops that the university had supposedly called to the area around campus. I graduated with Emma Sulkowicz, the artist who created the performance piece “Carry That Weight” that involved her carrying a dorm-issue mattress around campus for an entire year, to protest the university’s handling of her rape. I watched as the University President, Lee Bollinger—a man who I took a first Amendment class with my freshman year—refused to shake her hand as she crossed the stage, mattress supported by a small collection of friends, during graduation. There were more, smaller things on a regular basis—protest permits denied, hostile campus safety officers, disciplinary hearings, an unequal application of the rules—but these are the things I most remember.

However, I don’t just mean that Columbia’s treatment of Khalil is simply an escalation of existing patterns.

I first got started in the immigration justice movement in 2017, volunteering with the New Sanctuary Coalition, an organization begun around 2008 and operating out of Judson Memorial Church in Washington Square park. Among the people I remember the most from those weekly meetings was Ravi Ragbir, a tall, driven guy with long hair and a forceful way of speaking. Ravi was a long-time immigration activist and someone who had been living in the US with an order of deportation against him for years. Ravi entered the U.S. on a tourist visa in the early 90s, and became a green-card holder just a few years later—until he was convicted in a fraud case and was ordered deported without a hearing. His case over the years has taken a number of twists and turns, full of appeals and denials. At every turn, however, ICE acted in a punitive manner, and choosing to use their prosecutorial discretion to keep him under more surveillance, choosing not to open a route to naturalization through his marriage to his U.S. Citizen wife.

This is very often how immigration enforcement goes—many things end up being at the discretion of officials. Who gets arrested, who gets surveilled, who gets an ankle monitor vs. who gets put in immigration detention. This, in theory, makes the system more open and forgiving, but in reality means that it allows officials to work under a lack of transparency, making decisions without clear motives, making things like routine ICE check ins terrifying propositions.

For example: during a routine check-in in January 2018, ICE arrested Ravi. That same week, one of New Sanctuary Coalition’s founding members, Jean Montrevil, was also arrested and deported. Both men were quickly flown from New York to Florida—isolating them from their families and support networks, much like Khalil. While Ravi won a stay of deportation, he was not secure in his ability to stay in the country until this January, when he received a presidential pardon from Biden. Montrevil, also was eventually able to return to the U.S. after a protracted legal battle.

I want to emphasize that while these two men are, in some sense of the word, now “ok”—ok in that they are able to be with their families, to live the lives they planned for themselves, their lives have been irreparably damaged by these arrests and deportations. Often it means months or even years living away from loved ones, a constant fear of deportation, spending time in immigration detention centers—often in difficult, dangerous locations—Krome, where these men were kept, has a long record of human rights abuses. In Khalil’s case—he may end up getting out of immigration detention, his first amendment rights vindicated—but at what cost? He is at LaSalle Correctional facility, one of the places I know by name from years of reading ICE detention facility inspection reports. His wife is weeks away from giving birth—will he be forced to forego those first few precious weeks or months of bonding with his firstborn child?

Alina Das, a professor at NYU’s Law School, has put together one of the most comprehensive studies of federal retaliation against immigration advocates—in many cases, using their own immigration statuses against them as a means of silencing them. Would you speak out if you knew it meant you might be separated from your family for years? It’s an effective tool, using the plausible deniability of “prosecutorial discretion” to keep people from asserting their own rights. Each of these activists, from Scott Warren who dropped water in the desert for border crossers, to Ravi Ragbir and Jean Montrevil, to Mahmoud Khalil, knew what the stakes were in speaking out, and each of them—and countless others—have paid an incredibly high price in their fight for justice.

I think the things that make the Khalil case unique are that the orders to arrest him came, apparently, from the top—Secretary of State Marco Rubio apparently signed off on the arrest himself—and that Khalil had no previous, unrelated criminal offense that rendered him previously deportable. His speech itself was the “crime”—something about as unconstitutional as it gets. (As a side note—“criminal offense” sounds serious, but I’ve known people with orders of deportation for shoplifting charges, for DUIs, for gambling. If a white suburban teen can get away with it with a warning, you shouldn’t be separated from your family for it.) I don’t want to hand-wave away this distinction as if it means nothing—it’s a serious escalation in tactics and boldness—but it’s also part of a continued pattern of actions against people speaking out on behalf of their own rights, and those of others.

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In case you missed it, here’s Jess’ article on the Khalil kidnapping—I’m borrowing her framing of the case as a kidnapping because it’s the correct one.

Also, over on my own Substack,

Ojos de Santa Lucia

, I wrote about my own practice of pen-palling with folks in immigration detention, something that makes me feel a little more human in times like these.

Nature writing for ICE Detainees