U.S. State-Sponsored Kidnapping AGAIN
The detention of Mahmoud Kahlil is wrong and illegal.
A quick note: The Beautiful and Banned has (finally) joined the Injustice Report team! Listen to my podcast with Christine Renee Miller about banned books, plays, and films now and throughout history wherever you get your podcasts. Tomorrow, and every other Wednesday, you’ll receive a brief note in your inbox about what’s happening with book banning in the US, what’s in the episode, and some questions for us to discuss; it’ll be a separate section within this publication. It’s taken me a couple of weeks to figure out the logistics of all of this, so thank you for your patience—more tomorrow! Today’s episode about All Boys Aren't Blue is available now!
Last Friday, my colleague, Lauren Pinkston—an anti-trafficking expert—wrote a searing report on how the US government openly trafficked asylum seekers to Panama on February 3.
Then on Saturday, the US government kidnapped a green card holder. There’s no other word for it. And President Trump has made clear that this is just the beginning.
As his friends first reported on social media, Mahmoud Khalil and his wife, who is eight months pregnant and a US citizen, had just returned home from iftar—the meal to break the day’s fast after sunset during Ramadan. ICE officials without a judicial warrant met them in the lobby of their Columbia University housing. Khalil is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent who graduated last year from the School of International and Public Affairs, and was part of the group leading protests last year at Columbia against the killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
![RELEASE MAHMOUD KHALIL [USA 25.25]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Lhcc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0b231836-545e-42cf-9aa7-692315cf7da8_600x503.png "RELEASE MAHMOUD KHALIL [USA 25.25]")
The ICE officers initially told the couple that Khalil’s student visa had been revoked. After Khalil informed them he was a green card holder, according to Joseph Howley in an interview for Democracy Now!:
“…they seemed confused, got on the phone with someone, declared that the green card had also been revoked. Mahmoud’s lawyer got on the phone with them, demanded to see the warrant, and they hung up.”
Green cards cannot be revoked without due process, including a hearing before an immigration judge. It’s a complicated process that is rare and onerous—it can take years. Violating Khalil’s due process and detaining Khalil without a judiciary warrant is illegal. Here’s a great website explaining the difference between a judicial warrant and an ICE administrative warrant; an administrative warrant does not allow ICE officials to enter a space in which there is reasonable expectation of privacy, nor can they just willy-nilly decide to revoke Khalil’s legal residency.
If a judge signed off on a warrant because Khalil was credibly charged with fraudulent or criminal activities, that would be legal. His arrest would also not be about his immigration status but those criminal charges. That is not what happened.
That’s why I’m using the word “kidnapping.” Without due process, the US government disappeared a legal resident.
Khalil’s lawyer, Amy Greer, was unable to locate him for more than 36 hours. She went to a facility where he was reportedly being held in New Jersey, but he wasn’t there. Eventually, Greer was able to track down Khalil at an ICE facility in Jena, Louisiana—one of the most dangerous in the country.
As of the writing of this article, that’s still where he’s being held.
I keep thinking about Khalil’s wife.
I’ve been struck by the fact that she is not named in the legal documents that were filed on Sunday, or in any of the news reports. I cannot imagine what she’s going through, mere weeks before giving birth.
One of my friends knows people who know Khalil’s wife; I texted that friend yesterday afternoon to find out what’s happening in New York. She told me the community is surrounding Khalil’s wife with love and support right now. A meal train is in the works for Khalil’s wife.
There’s something about that meal train that’s sticking with me. Instead of preparing for their new baby, the young couple were facing death threats. The day before he was detained, Khalil wrote the university begging for help and reported on the threats he was receiving. Within 24 hours, ICE showed up and took him away.
His wife has to be afraid on so many fronts. Her friends are helping to fundraise for his legal defense and they’re advocating vehemently on her husband’s behalf. And they’re making sure Khalil’s wife is fed.
This week, I’m also organizing a meal train for a dear friend who gave birth yesterday to a scrumptious, fat-cheeked baby girl. That sweet baby is not more loved or wanted than Khalil’s child, who is about to be born. The meal train should be so they can soak up time with their newborn, not to support a wife who had no idea where her husband was for days. In the middle of what has become a widespread debate about immigration and free speech, there is a woman who just wants her husband to be with her when the baby comes.
For almost a decade, I’ve had to make the argument that people who are caught up in these immigration stunts, starting with the Trump Muslim Ban in 2017, are just normal people trying to live their lives, to be safe, and to be free. I’m absolutely sick of it. We should not have to argue for Khalil and his wife and their unborn child’s basic human rights. Yet, here we are.
In repeated social media posts, Trump and his administration have called Khalil “a radical pro-Hamas student,” said that the protests are “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American,” and promised that his arrest is the “first of many to come.”
In a time when the president is leading with half-truths or lies, it matters more than ever that we tell the truth about what’s actually happening. It is neither “pro-Hamas” nor antisemitic to protest what is happening in Gaza.
Truth #1: The Netanyahu’s administration has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023, including more than 14,500 children. The International Court of Justice is currently considering a case about whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
According to the UN, “Palestinian children now represent the largest cohort of child amputees per capital in the world.”
What happened when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 was absolutely horrific; 1,700 Israeli and foreign nationals have been killed in the same time period. But it is possible to both condemn Hamas’s actions and speak out against what is happening in Gaza currently.
In fact, T’ruah, a rabbinic human rights organization, did that over a year ago, in January 2024. After calling on Hamas to release the hostages, they continue:
“…the extent of death and destruction in Gaza is unbearable. Our hearts are broken by reports of over 25,000 Palestinians killed [many more have died since then], the majority of them women and children. Parents are unable to feed their children, disease is spreading, and doctors are forced to operate without anesthesia. Nearly 2 million Gazans have been displaced, and even as we write this, nearly half the population of Gaza faces starvation. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu and many of the extremist members of his government — whom Israelis have been protesting for more than a year — continue to incite hatred and violence with dangerous rhetoric.”
Things have become much more dire since they published that statement.
They released it because, in December 2023, South Africa officially accused Israel of committing genocide in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The word has specific legal ramifications. It was invented after the Holocaust by a Polish-Jewish professor, Rafael Lemkin, because he could not find a word in any language strong enough to describe what happened to 6 million Jews and millions of others under Hitler. After World War II, with the leadership of the US and the newly created United Nations, Lemkin’s word became international law. The UN approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide on December 9, 1948.
In response to South Africa’s accusation, the ICJ ruled that Palestinians had a “plausible” case for genocide, and Israel is now facing genocide charges brought also by Ireland, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Libya, Bolivia, Turkey, the Maldives, Chile, Spain and the State of Palestine. The case is still ongoing in the international court.
Amnesty International concluded in its own report in December 2024 that Israel is, in fact, committing genocide.
The truth is, it is not antisemitic to criticize the government of Israel for attacks against civilians in Gaza. Many Jewish organizations have done just that, like T’ruah, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, among many others. And it is not “pro-terrorist” or “pro-Hamas” to protest the ongoing deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including children.
While the situation between Israel and Palestine is politically and culturally complicated, there should be a simple truth we can all agree on: killing and maiming children is always, always wrong.
And in the US, it is legal to protest the deaths of those children.
Truth #2: Free speech is a right enshrined in the Constitution, and it applies to both citizens and legal residents.
Looking back at the first fifty days of the second Trump administration, it’s now clear one of their biggest goals is to get rid of people who don’t agree with them. It’s what’s behind actions ranging from the funding freeze for USAID to the Trump takeover of The Kennedy Center.
But the right to free speech is so important, the US founders wrote it into the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Whether or not people, including the president, agree or disagree with the protestors speaking out against the deaths of civilians in Gaza on college campuses, the right to protest, march, and demonstrate applies to everyone in the United States—including green card holders.
It is illegal to forcibly detain a legal resident without due process, prevent him from seeking legal counsel, and deport him simply for exercising his right to free speech.
That’s why a judge just blocked Mahmoud Kahlil’s deportation.
And that’s why what happened to Khalil on Saturday is state-sanctioned kidnapping.
This situation tracks perfectly with the historical research I did for We Were Illegal, my recent book about my family’s migration to Texas. Over four hundred years, I traced the illegal actions of my white ancestors (like my great-great-granfather who came to the country without documents on a ship from Bavaria, or my foremother whose children were legal bastards, or my relative who defrauded the Mexican government in order to steal tracks of land). And I examined things that were legal but I now view as wrong (like owning slaves, committing genocide against the Karankawa people in Texas, or redlining the neighborhood I grew up in). I came to the conclusion that, in every generation, the question of what is legal might be pitted against what is right.
This is such a moment for us here in the US right now.
My ancestors faced complicated ethical choices, and more often than not, did not speak out on behalf of people who were oppressed. One example that still haunts me from my book research was Slowman Reese who, eight generations before I was born, was a slave overseer. His preacher, David Rice, was paid with a salary funded by slaves that my family members’ church owned (let that sentence sink in).
Rice was pro-slavery, then he changed his mind to become an abolitionist. He spent the rest of his life in the slave-owning South preaching against slavery.
It isn’t enough to say, “Oh, they didn’t know better, those were different times.” Not when people in those times learned the truth, and changed their minds.
Another preacher who changed his mind in the 1920s and 1930s was a German Lutheran pastor named Martin Niemöller. He sympathized with Nazi views early on, but eventually changed his mind and was imprisoned for being a vocal opponent to the Nazi regime.
His words are now part of a text panel that hangs in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I’m not Palestinian, an immigrant, or a green card holder; I’m a white US citizen whose family has lived here for generations. Which is precisely why I’m speaking out today, and I hope you will join me. There are many ways to do that, including calling your representatives and protesting and sharing this post, but one is pretty basic: tell the people in your life what’s going on. Let them know how you feel, and inform them what is true and what is legal in this situation. Even Ann Coulter is questioning the Trump administration’s deportation of Khalil—it’s that egregious and clearcut.
So join me in speaking out: It is neither legal nor right to kidnap and deport Mahmoud Khalil.