( Middle East Monitor ) – The largest case in public discourse today revolves around Columbia University, where 22 students — including Mahmoud Khalil — have faced suspensions, diploma revocations, or even deportation. The crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism has escalated sharply since US President Donald Trump came to power in January, but Khalil’s case signals a premeditated attempt by the US government to deter global Palestinian solidarity.
Khalil’s detention, orchestrated through opaque legal manoeuvres, reflects a broader strategy to suppress dissent. His sudden disappearance, the secrecy around his whereabouts, and the swift transfers across multiple states all raise serious concerns about violations of due process.
The timeline of Khalil’s detention
On 8 March, plainclothes ICE agents seized Khalil outside his university-owned apartment. For days, his wife and lawyers had no idea where he was; initially held at the Elizabeth Detention Centre in New Jersey, Khalil was quickly transferred the next day to Louisiana. His legal team only confirmed his location through ICE’s detainee locator database on 13 March meaning Khalil was taken off the grid for five days.
Key questions remain unanswered: Why was he moved from New York to New Jersey, and then to Louisiana? Why was his arrest conducted covertly? And why was his legal status — as a Green Card holder — ignored in favour of a deportation push?
A federal immigration case with no grounds
ICE procedures typically apply to undocumented immigrants or visa holders. Yet Khalil, a Green Card holder, had no criminal charges against him — federal or state — that would justify his arrest and deportation. His detention has been driven by political motives rather than legal grounds, a stark example of how federal power can be manipulated to silence political expression.
New York’s sanctuary policies complicate this effort — the state prohibits local law enforcement from assisting federal immigration agencies unless due process is followed. This likely explains why ICE agents conducted Khalil’s arrest in secret.
Why New Jersey? Why Louisiana?
Transferring Khalil across state lines appears to have been a calculated move. Federal law dictates that immigration cases are heard in the state where the person is detained. Holding Khalil in New Jersey, rather than New York, allowed prosecutors to avoid New York’s progressive courts while keeping options open for a potential transfer to a more conservative jurisdiction.
Louisiana, a state with a more conservative judicial climate, was the government’s preferred location for the case. With almost double the national rate of authorised deportations, it is clear why President Trump would attempt to push for Khalil’s immediate deportation without trial. Although that motion failed, the transfer process highlights an alarming trend: the strategic use of federal power to undermine legal protections for pro-Palestinian activists.
A broader crackdown on dissent
Khalil’s case does not exist in a vacuum. His detention is part of a much larger crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism, signalled explicitly by Trump’s promise that Khalil is the “first of many”. This repression is happening particularly on university campuses, where students and faculty members are increasingly being surveilled, harassed and punished for expressing solidarity with Palestine.
The recent case of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish university student, also went viral exposing the terrifying moment plain-clothed ICE agents detained her for her pro-Palestinian views.
The US is disappearing dissenters in broad daylight
At the heart of this repression is the weaponisation of accusations of anti-Semitism to delegitimise any criticism of Israel. Advocacy for Palestinian rights, opposition to US military aid to Israel, and even calls for a ceasefire have been deliberately conflated with hate speech, creating a climate where pro-Palestinian voices are systematically silenced. Universities, long considered bastions of free thought and political debate, have become central battlegrounds in this effort.
Students at elite institutions like Harvard, Columbia, and NYU have faced suspensions, revocation of job offers and outright expulsions for their political activism. Student groups, particularly those affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), have been disbanded, investigated or had their funding revoked.
Pro-Palestinian British student leaves US citing detention fear
The suppression is not just limited to campuses. The Trump administration has signalled a willingness to go even further, with the Department of Education opening investigations into multiple universities under the guise of addressing anti-Semitism — investigations that, in practice, are targeting pro-Palestinian speech. State legislatures have also joined the fray, with Florida banning campus chapters of SJP and Texas lawmakers pushing to criminalise pro-Palestinian advocacy altogether.
The Khalil case represents the newest form of this crackdown — where legal mechanisms, normally reserved for serious criminal cases, are being weaponised against activists. His detention suggests that the state is willing to bypass due process entirely to send a clear message: Palestinian solidarity will be punished.
Repression breeds resistance
But if history teaches us anything, it’s that repression often breeds resistance. Instead of silencing the movement, Khalil’s case has only fuelled international outrage and mobilisation. Student encampments, walkouts and demonstrations have surged across the US and beyond, with activists doubling down on their calls for justice. Rather than cowering in fear, students and organisers see Khalil’s case as a rallying cry, exposing the lengths to which the US government will go to protect Israeli impunity.
Khalil’s detention ignited outrage far beyond US borders. Within days of his arrest, students in British universities such as SOAS and UoM launched solidarity encampments, explicitly linking their protests to his case. In Glasgow, activists occupied university buildings demanding their institutions cut ties with Israeli counterparts, while in Melbourne, protesters chanted Khalil’s name during rallies. This wasn’t coincidence — it was proof of a movement learning to weaponise repression against itself. The state wants fear to win. But as Khalil wrote from detention: “They can’t jail a movement.”
The state miscalculated. By making Khalil a global case, they handed the Palestinian solidarity movement its most powerful narrative tool: visible proof of the crackdown’s cruelty. His case now appears on protest banners from Berlin to Jakarta, with demonstrators drawing direct parallels between his treatment and Israel’s detention of Palestinian journalists.
History offers a clear lesson. When Columbia tried to crush Vietnam War protests in 1968, it radicalised a generation. Today, each heavy-handed response — whether Khalil’s detention, Columbia’s suspensions, or the UK’s proposed protest bans — only fuels the movement’s growth.
The state fears this solidarity precisely because it works. When Louisiana jailers tried to isolate Khalil, they didn’t account for the flood of letters from London, Johannesburg and Sao Paulo that followed. The greatest irony has been the response of university students globally seizing parts of their campuses in solidarity with Khalil, whose case has become inextricably tied with university suppression.
This is the resistance they never planned for — not lawsuits or lobbying, but a tidal wave of collective rage that treats every attack as a recruitment poster. Khalil’s captors thought they were building a wall of fear. Instead, they gave the world a ladder, and people are rising up.
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