Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez condemned Donald Trump’s administration for the “illegal” persecution of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student imprisoned for more than three months in an immigration detention center for his pro-Palestinian activism.
The New York congresswoman met Khalil and his family at Newark Liberty International Airport on Saturday for a press conference shortly after their return.
“Because Mahmoud Khalil is an advocate for Palestinian human rights, he has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,” said Mrs. Clinton.
On March 8, Khalil was stripped of his green card and arrested in front of his pregnant wife in their New York City apartment building.
He was then transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Louisiana, where he was held for more than 100 days and forced to miss his child’s birth.
On Friday, a federal judge released him from ICE custody on bail, while legal challenges to his arrest and removal from the country continue in both federal and immigration courts.
“It is wrong, it is illegal, it is a violation of his First Amendment rights, it is an affront to every American and … we will continue to resist the politicization and the continued political persecution that ICE is engaged in,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
“Everyone agrees that the persecution based on political speech is wrong and is a violation of all of our First Amendment rights, not just Mahmoud’s,” she told reporters.
Khalil, a Palestinian, grew up in a refugee camp in Syria. He entered the United States on a student visa in 2022 to pursue a master’s degree in public administration and became the face of Columbia protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Trump administration officials have accused Khalil of “antisemitic activities,” which he and his legal team have categorically denied.
“The US government funds this genocide, and Columbia University invests in it,” he told reporters in Newark. “This is what I was protesting, this is what I will continue to protest with every one of you, not only if they threaten me with detention, even if they kill me, I will still speak up for Palestine.”
Speaking up for Palestinian rights is “speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished, as if this administration wants to do,” Khalil stated.
Officials acknowledge that Khalil did not commit a crime, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has attempted to justify Khalil’s arrest by invoking a rarely used law, claiming that Khalil’s presence in the United States jeopardizes foreign policy interests in preventing antisemitism.
A judge’s order for his release is the latest in a string of high-profile legal setbacks for the Trump administration, which includes the arrests of international scholars for pro-Palestinian activities.
Their arrests sparked widespread outrage at the administration’s apparent attempts to crush campus dissent, and Rubio has stated that he “proudly” revoked hundreds of student visas for campus activism.
Ocasio-Cortez stated that the Trump administration “knows they are waging a losing legal battle” against pro-Palestine students and is “violating the law” in order to build a campaign against them.
On Friday night, lawyers for the Trump administration filed an appeal to the order for his release.
A spokesperson for Homeland Security described the order as “yet another example of how out-of-control members of the judicial branch are undermining national security.”
