The Attack On Mahmoud Khalil's Civil Rights Is Straight Out Of “War On Terror” Playbook ... And Aimed At You
Creating a terrorism exception to the Constitution was always going to come back around to haunt dissenters.
The systematic erosion of constitutional protections in the wake of 9/11 has always been a threat to everyone’s civil liberties, not just those engaged in acts of mass violence.
Illustration by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
A 2022 report by Georgetown Law found that, since its founding in 2003, ICE has dramatically expanded its spying powers and now operates as a “domestic surveillance agency.”
By Schuyler Mitchell
Truthout (3/12/25)
Mahmoud Khalil did everything by the book. The 30-year-old Palestinian came to the United States to study, completed his master’s degree at an Ivy League school, married a U.S. citizen and obtained legal permanent residency. Last year, as students across the country called on their universities to divest from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Khalil led negotiations on behalf of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition. Fellow students said he was patient and strategic in conversations with administrators, and he spoke tactfully in interviews with the media. While elected officials decried student protesters for shielding their identities, Khalil often appeared unmasked, becoming a public face for CUAD’s demands.
These are the things that the Gaza solidarity movement’s critics have demanded from student protesters in order to win their respect. Khalil did them all. He exercised his constitutional right to free speech and has not been charged with any crime. And yet, on March 8, officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed up at Khalil’s home and arrested him anyway. The agents told Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, that the State Department had revoked his student visa; when she informed them that he in fact holds a green card, the ICE officers said the State Department was canceling that instead.
Donald Trump made it clear that this moment was coming. He has repeatedly pledged to deport international students who participated in pro-Palestine protests, falsely casting the protesters as “pro-jihadist.” On Monday, Trump declared that Khalil’s case was “the first arrest of many to come.” While a federal judge has stayed Khalil’s deportation, the Columbia graduate’s illegal arrest is a chilling milestone in the Trump administration’s draconian crackdown on dissent.
I emphasize Khalil’s mainstream respectability here, not because I believe there’s one single “right” way to protest, but because it underscores what human rights advocates have been warning about for decades: The systematic erosion of constitutional protections in the wake of 9/11 has always been a threat to everyone’s civil liberties, not just those engaged in acts of mass violence.
Blatant disregard for constitutional rights
When former President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” in 2001, his administration — largely with the support of Congress — ushered in a new era of expanded executive power and a blatant disregard for constitutional rights. Bush launched the President’s Surveillance Program in secret, which directed the National Security Agency to conduct illegal electronic spying on U.S. citizens, including warrantless phone-tapping and the mining of internet data. Congress passed the PATRIOT Act, with little to no debate, drastically expanding the government’s surveillance powers. Meanwhile, a parallel criminal legal system took shape, as Bush ordered the creation of secretive military tribunals with limited oversight to try detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. Torture techniques were greenlit — by officials at some of the highest levels of government — in violation of international law. Throughout this, the Bush administration used the unitary executive theory to defend a broad interpretation of “executive privilege” and exempt its actions and deliberations from public view.
Legal scholars have repeatedly pointed to the Bush administration’s so-called war on terror as a turning point in the expansion of presidential authority. Vice President Dick Cheney himself stated that the Bush administration’s actions would restore the presidency to “the proper scope” of its powers.
Baseless accusations
But creating a terrorism exception to the Constitution was always going to come back around to haunt dissenters. As Trump has made abundantly clear, accusations of terrorism can be levied baselessly to suppress dissent and consolidate political power. Thus far, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — which was itself created during Bush’s tenure — has accused Khalil only of leading “activities aligned to Hamas,” a designated terrorist organization, but has not clarified what those activities were or even what “aligned to” means in practice. Providing material support for terrorism is illegal, but this has a specific definition under U.S. law — supplying money, weapons, training, housing, and other resources to designated terrorist organizations. Even passing out flyers with Hamas logos — something the White House recently claimed, without evidence, that Khalil did — would not meet the “material support” bar.
Of course, the Bush legacy is also one of baseless terrorism accusations, particularly against Muslim and Arab men. The post-9/11 National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) required noncitizen men from more than two dozen, primarily Muslim-majority countries to register with the DHS before entering the U.S. and have their whereabouts tracked while in the country. The purported anti-terrorism effort surveilled more than 80,000 people yet never secured a single terrorism conviction in its 10 years of operation; about 13,000 people were, however, put through deportation proceedings.
NSEERS was suspended in 2011 and dismantled completely by 2016, but plenty of other federal government surveillance programs have cropped up to take its place. As The Verge reported, ICE can access the address data of most Americans through their utility records and sweep up personal information through a sprawling network of state, local and federal government databases. A 2022 report by Georgetown Law found that, since its founding in 2003, ICE has dramatically expanded its spying powers and now operates as a “domestic surveillance agency.”
Surveillance threatens all
“ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time,” the report’s authors note. “In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has — without any judicial, legislative or public oversight — reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S.” ICE probably only needed to know Khalil’s name to locate him at his Columbia University-owned apartment.
When Barack Obama became president in 2008, he notably declined to walk back Bush-era surveillance powers or prosecute those involved in torturing detainees at Guantánamo, claiming he wanted to “look forward, not backward.” Biden’s administration further entrenched and expanded the federal government’s power to conduct electronic surveillance.
Trump’s attempt to deport Khalil draws from and builds upon this legacy. This is the norm of presidential power in 2025 — drastic government overreach, mass warrantless surveillance, the weaponization of terrorism accusations to suppress First Amendment activity. With a fascist in office, attacks on civil liberties will be escalated, and Muslim and Arab communities will bear the brunt of the administration’s repression.
On March 11, Khalil’s wife issued a statement. It paints a picture of a scene that Trump has promised will soon play out again and again across the country. “U.S. immigration ripped my soul from me when they handcuffed my husband and forced him into an unmarked vehicle,” wrote Khalil’s wife. “Instead of putting together our nursery and washing baby clothes in anticipation of our first child, I am left sitting in our apartment, wondering when Mahmoud will get a chance to call me from a detention center.”
Obama’s Betrayal & Legacy: Bipartisan Fascism
When Barack Obama became president in 2008, he notably declined to walk back Bush-era surveillance powers or prosecute those involved in torturing detainees at Guantánamo, claiming he wanted to “look forward, not backward.” Biden’s administration further entrenched and expanded the federal government’s power to conduct electronic surveillance.
On My Husband’s Unconstitutional Arrest
Notice how the faces of the cowardly ICE agents are obscured. Shielding traitors of the Constitution!
He begged the university for legal support, “I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support and I urge you to intervene,” he said in his email.
Columbia University never responded to that email.
By Noor Abdallah
Counterpunch (3/14/25)
My husband, Mahmoud Khalil, is my rock. He is my home and he is my happy place. I am currently 8 months pregnant, and I could not imagine a better father for my child. We’ve been excitedly preparing to welcome our baby, and now Mahmoud has been ripped away from me for no reason at all.
I am pleading with the world to continue to speak up against his unjust and horrific detention by the Trump administration.
This last week has been a nightmare: Six days ago, an intense and targeted doxxing campaign against Mahmoud began. Anti-Palestinian organizations were spreading false claims about my husband that were simply not based in reality. They were making threats against Mahmoud and he was so concerned about his safety that he emailed Columbia University on March 7th. In his email, he begged the university for legal support, “I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support and I urge you to intervene,” he said in his email.
Columbia University never responded to that email.
Instead, on March 8th, at around 8:30 pm, as we were returning home from an Iftar dinner, an ICE officer followed us into our building and asked, “Are you Mahmoud Khalil?”
Mahmoud stated, “Yes.”
The officer then proceeded to say, “We are with the police, you have to come with us.”
The officer told Mahmoud to give me the apartment keys and that I could go upstairs. When I refused, afraid to leave my husband, the officer stated, “I will arrest you too.”
The officers later barricaded Mahmoud from me. We were not shown any warrant and the ICE officers hung up the phone on our lawyer. When my husband attempted to give me his phone so I could speak with our lawyer, the officers got increasingly aggressive, despite Mahmoud being fully cooperative.
Everyone who knows Mahmoud knows him to be level-headed even in the most stressful situations. And even in this terrifying situation, he was calm.
Within minutes, they had handcuffed Mahmoud, took him out into the street and forced him into an unmarked car. Watching this play out in front of me was traumatizing: It felt like a scene from a movie I never signed up to watch.
I was born and raised in the Midwest. My parents came here from Syria, carrying their stories of the oppressive regime there that made life unlivable. They believed living in the US would bring a sense of safety and stability. But here I am, 40 years after my parents immigrated here, and just weeks before I’m due to give birth to our first child, and I feel more unsafe and unstable than I have in my entire life.
US immigration ripped my soul from me when they handcuffed my husband and forced him into an unmarked vehicle. Instead of putting together our nursery and washing baby clothes in anticipation of our first child, I am left sitting in our apartment, wondering when Mahmoud will get a chance to call me from a detention center.
I demand the US government release him, reinstate his Green Card, and bring him home.
Noor Abdalla, wife of Mahmoud Khalil, is a dentist living in New York City.
BETRAYAL: UK Silent On Former Soft Power Asset Mahmoud Khalil, Who Passed Security Screening
[Editor’s Note: This is a HUGE angle on the Mahmoud Khalil illegal arrest story. As expected, the mainstream media missed it and it only came to light because of alternative media. Salute to The Grayzone. — M. T]
The Grayzone (3/15/25)
The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate on US political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil's past as a British soft power asset, and how London refuses to defend him as the Trump administration demonizes him as a terrorist.
10-minute video
CNN Guest SMEARS Mahmoud Khalil, Then CRUMBLES When Asked For Evidence…
Dure Dissidence (3/12/25)
6-minute video
Genocide Denying, Enabling Bernie Sanders Gets Nasty: “What did I just say?”
Note: This video also includes previously unseen arrest of Mahmoud Khalil. Note how the officers — illegally — refused to identify themselves or even the agency they represented. Good little Gestapo boys for the new Fascist State of America. — Mark Taylor
Sabby Sabbs (3/15/25)
20-minute video
NEW RESISTANCE CAMPAIGN: Don't Buy Anything From Israeli Zionist Apartheid!
”It's essential we take aim at the corporations that enable the oppression.”
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (3/12/25)
PSC has launched an important new campaign: Don't Buy Apartheid.
We're calling on all individuals, shops, cafés, and venues to engage in two key boycott actions: boycott Israeli produce, and boycott Coca-Cola. Join your local PSC branch and take action at supermarkets selling these goods, and reach out to local shops, restaurants and venues to ask them to pledge to join the boycott and display a campaign poster.
More info: https://palestinecampaign.org/campaig...
2-minute video
“There is no opposition party. It’s theater.”
— Russell Dabular, Due Dissidence podcast (3/14/25)
Oligarchy cannot ‘emerge’ because always and everywhere, it is the very premise of the Capitalist state.
The specific, Democratic Party contribution to oligarchic rule includes the retention of an handful of nominally ‘left’ ‘leaders’ who are paraded as ‘evidence’ of life among the dead.
B. Sanders, AOC, Dennis K. and others are paraded in the effort to redirect BACK INTO the Party those on the verge of escaping its orbit.
The ‘reformist’ and ‘push the party left’ narratives attempt to derail genuinely revolutionary developments BEFORE they become a significant force.
Once redirected into the Party, it is suffocated and strangled. The Democratic Party is where reform movements go to die.
WHEN a genuinely revolutionary movement arises that refuses to engage, the Sanders/AOCs etc. will be the first to train the machine guns on the population.
The Democratic Party is a pseudo-left tendency. It is implacably opposed to the interests of the proletariat, and it has NEVER been otherwise. Nor will it be.
wsws.org
There's a new class action lawsuit filed on Khalil's behalf by the Arab Defense Fund that could bring this "executive odor" of Trump's spiraling down the crapper... If US agents (and were they actually "ICE" or the "Brown Shirts"?) don't identify themselves and don't have the proper warrant signed by an actual judge, then the arrest is null and void. But here they've kidnapped the poor guy and separated him from his pregnant wife... You gotta wonder how thick-skulled these gorillas in the Trump admin are for wanting to paint an even more unflattering picture of themselves. SIGH!