Hundreds of supporters of Mahmoud Khalil rally at Foley Square, New York, US, 12 March 2025. [Getty]
US politicians, mainly Democrats, are gradually responding to the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident and recent graduate of Columbia University, who was arrested in front of his pregnant wife without charges at his residence in New York City over the weekend.
Khalil was a leading Palestinian activist and negotiator at the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University and was “abducted and detained” by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to a US-based pro-Palestinian group.
US President Donald Trump promised that this detention would be the “first of many to come“.
The responses against the arrest, primarily among Democrats, range in concern for the Palestinian activist. However, what is uniting most is the conviction that the first amendment is not negotiable, nor is the system of due process.
“How many more New Yorkers will you detain? How many more New Yorkers without charge?” assembly member and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani shouted at Border Czar Tom Homan in Albany, New York’s state capital, on Wednesday. “Do you believe in the First Amendment, Tom Homan?”
In a social media post, Mamdani said he approached Homan, who went to Albany to “do Trump’s bidding—push for mass deportations, carry out the assault on working class New Yorkers, and justify the unjustifiable detention of legal permanent resident and father-to-be, Mahmoud Khalil.”
In response to Homan’s presence at the state Capitol, a large crowd gathered to protest his immigration policies, which also includes mass deportations and family separation as a way to deter migration across the southern border.
Meanwhile, an even bigger demonstration of hundreds was held outside a courthouse in New York City. Ramzi Kassem an attorney for Khalil and founding director of Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) Project, spoke to a crowd in New York after a hearing on the case.
‘Threat to all Americans’
On Tuesday, fourteen members of the US Congress—including Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Nydia Velázquez, Mark Pocan, Delia Ramirez, Jasmine Crockett, Ayanna Pressley, and others—have sent a letter to Trump’s administration, demanding Khalil‘s immediate release, emphasising that his constitutional rights have been violated.
In their letter, they said that “this is an attempt to criminalise political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country. Khalil’s arrest is an act of anti-Palestinian racism intended to silence the Palestine solidarity movement in this country, but this lawless abuse of power and political repression is a threat to all Americans.”
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib took to X to call the move by the Trump administration a “test case”.
“If they can illegally abduct him and shred his legal rights, they will never stop. Anyone this lawless administration disagrees with can be targeted,” she added.
Senator Peter Welch echoed Tlaib’s comments on X, saying “If Trump starts illegally revoking green cards from people because he doesn’t like their speech, we’re on the path to full-blown authoritarianism.”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a call to people across the political aisle, saying on X that “anyone – left, right, or centre – who has highlighted the importance of constitutional rights + free speech should be sounding the alarm now.”
For his part, Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, whose voting record is generally centre-left, also weighed in on social media, pointing to what he sees as a danger to First Amendment rights.
Schumer began by emphasising that he disagreed with Khalil’s approach to his Palestinian advocacy, suggesting that Khalil made other students uncomfortable. Nevertheless, Schumer expressed his disagreement with the lack of due process and said that if the administration couldn’t prove Khalil violated the law, the measures against him should be dropped.
“The Trump administration’s DHS must articulate any criminal charges or facts that would justify his detention or the initiation of deportation proceedings against him,” wrote Schumer.
“If the administration cannot prove he has violated any criminal law to justify taking this severe action and is doing it for the opinions he has expressed, then that is wrong, they are violating the First Amendment protections we all enjoy and should drop their wrongheaded action,” he continued.
Trump responded by saying that Schumer had become a Palestinian, using the term as a slur, something he has said about the senator multiple times, in one instance saying he was “a proud member of Hamas.”
In a meeting with an Irish delegation, on Wednesday, Trump said, unprompted, “Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned. He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish any more. He’s a Palestinian.”
Trump’s statement has been widely condemned by Democrats.
Republicans have remained largely silent on the matter, similar to their responses to the arrest of Khalil.
Marco Rubio, however, was not shy to share his position on the matter. Also on Wednesday, he told reporters that “this is not about free speech”, rather “this is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with.”
