“Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend and deport these terrorist sympathisers from our country – never to return again.”
The National Immigration Law Centre, a Washington-based lobby group that advocates for low-income migrants and their families, said Khalil was exercising his right to free speech and his arrest marked “a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s abuse of immigration enforcement and disregard for the law”.
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“We denounce this outrageous, politically motivated attempt to silence Mr Khalil by locking him away and threatening to revoke his green card without due process,” the centre’s president, Kica Matos, said.
Like many Australian universities, Columbia bargained with student protesters over the ongoing presence of encampments opposing Israel and the war in Gaza. Khalil represented the students in those negotiations, and became a visible personality of the movement, as well as a target of pro-Israeli activists.
He and other student leaders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest have rejected claims of antisemitism, saying they were part of a broader anti-war movement that included Jewish students and groups. But the student group, at times, has voiced support for leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated as terrorist organisations in the US.
In Australia, the Coalition has vowed to cancel the visas of any student protesters “found to be involved in spreading antisemitism or supporting terrorism”, and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has said he will consider refusing and cancelling visas “for anyone who seeks to incite discord in Australia”.
The Khalil case is different and legally complex because he is a lawful permanent resident of the US. It is not clear whether authorities realised that at the time of his arrest. His lawyer, Greer, told US media that immigration agents originally told her they were instructed to revoke his student visa (which he did not have).
Khalil’s arrest follows the Trump administration’s decision last week to cancel $US400 million ($636 million) in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University due to what it described as the school’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”.
US Education Secretary Linda McMahon said any institutions that received federal funding had a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination and Americans were sick of elite college campuses being “overrun by anti-Semitic students and agitators”.
In a statement that did not mention Khalil directly, Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong said she understood the distress students and staff were feeling with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the streets around campus. She said the university’s leadership did not request ICE’s presence at the university, contrary to rumours.
“We are deeply committed to freedom of speech as a fundamental value that we must uphold as a community – citizens and non-citizens alike,” she said. “Vigorous and open debate, consistent with our rules, is central to achieving our academic mission.”
with AP, Reuters
