If They Could Arrest You, They Would

The President's harrowing new directives edge closer and closer to a dereliction of the freedom of speech

Image Credit: Noah Hughey

When ICE agents came to former Columbia Graduate Student Mahmoud Khalil’s university apartment to arrest him, they said it was on orders of the State Department to revoke his visa to the United States. When his lawyer was phoned in, she explained Khalil did not need a visa, and was a permanent US resident with a green card. The officers changed their story: They were actually there to revoke that.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security, confirmed the arrest to the AP, claiming it was at the directive of President Donald Trump’s order for the government and universities to investigate “antisemitism” on campuses linked to the protests and encampment movements led by students last spring for Gaza. The administration’s logic has held that these protests were not only overwhelming antisemitic, designed by default to attack and harass Jewish students on university campuses, but that they are directly in support of the terrorist o…