A demonstrator at an encampment at Columbia University in New York City waves the Palestinian flag on April 29, 2024. U.S. immigration authorities arrested an organizer of the protests in support of Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday, March 8, 2025. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)
This story originally appeared in NOTUS, a nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom.
Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are doing acrobatics to justify the Trump administration’s detainment of a Palestinian activist and green card holder, an escalation in its apparent willingness to go after people it sees as political enemies.
The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has not been charged with a crime, is the first of its kind in President Donald Trump’s second administration. Trump has said there are “many to come.” And as Democrats express worries about the precedent of arresting and revoking green cards from activists, Republicans are praising the administration’s actions, even as they’ve spent years making free speech a rallying cause for their party.
“I’m sure Secretary Rubio is very careful about this. I’m willing to bet he committed some legal violation,” Sen. Josh Hawley said, adding that he thought some of the protests and occupations at universities were unlawful. “When you assault students, when you break into campus buildings, when you tear down statues, that’s not free speech protest — that’s vandalism, that’s assault. People who do that, I think, ought to be deported.”
Khalil’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NOTUS. But Khalil, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, told CNN last year that he chose not to be directly involved in any campus encampments to avoid putting his student visa at risk. Instead, he opted to represent protesters in speeches, media interviews and negotiations with Columbia’s administration. He was arrested Saturday, and one of his lawyers said in a statement Monday that the federal government was trying to “stifle entirely lawful dissent” through his arrest and potential deportation.
Some Republicans rooted for his removal.
“If you come over here and support baby killers and you’re not a U.S. citizen, you oughta go home,” Sen. Rick Scott told NOTUS when asked about Khalil’s arrest.
In Tuesday’s White House press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated Trump’s promise of more arrests. And at an unrelated White House event on Tuesday afternoon, Trump dug further in.
“I think we ought to get them all out of the country. They’re troublemakers. They’re agitators. They don’t love our country,” he said in response to questions about Khalil’s arrest. “I think that guy, we oughta get him — I heard his statements, too, they were plenty bad, and I think we oughta get him the hell out of the country. … You can have him.”
Republicans on the Hill also told NOTUS they thought Khalil’s advocacy warranted his arrest and deportation.
“I don’t think that falls under a First Amendment issue. Of course, you want to keep First Amendment front and center. At the same time, I think his message was harmful to people. I think it was hateful. I think it was destructive to our greatest ally and, in effect, harmful to his student body,” Sen. Ted Budd said of Khalil.
Sen. John Kennedy, who represents Louisiana, the state where Khalil is being held in an immigration detention facility, acknowledged it’s unclear whether he’s committed any crimes. But still, Kennedy said he’s confident that Khalil is “gonna receive due process.”
“Mr. Khalil says that he’s just innocent as the driven snow, and that he’s just pro-Palestinian, and that he just filed some things on Facebook, and that he had nothing to do with illegal protests, illegal marches, or illegal occupation of university buildings, or harassment, physical and otherwise of Jewish students,” Kennedy told NOTUS. “We’ll find out if he’s telling the truth. If he’s lying, he needs to be deported.”
On the Democratic side, only 13 House Democrats signed onto Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s letter demanding Khalil’s release. She told NOTUS “a number of” her Democratic colleagues were also planning to send their own letters to the administration.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted a statement Tuesday first condemning Khalil’s activism and then demanding that the Department of Homeland Security “articulate any criminal charges or facts that would justify his detention or the initiation of deportation proceedings against him.”
“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,” Schumer wrote.
And Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee posted multiple times Monday about Khalil’s arrest, calling it an act of “straight up authoritarianism.”
“It would concern me if any person that’s here legally, that has a green card, is detained solely for free speech reasons,” Sen. Ruben Gallego said, adding that he’d like more information from the administration before opining further.
The Department of Homeland Security has said that its arrest of Khalil was part of an effort to “support” President Donald Trump’s executive orders concerning antisemitism. In a statement to NOTUS it cited the secretary of state’s authority to deport someone if the secretary “determines the alien’s presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” DHS announced it was working with the State Department on the case and said Khalil was leading “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted Sunday on X, linking to an Associated Press article about Khalil’s arrest.
A judge put Khalil’s deportation on hold Monday after Khalil’s lawyer filed a habeas corpus petition and scheduled a hearing for Wednesday.
Though DHS has not clarified what specific unlawful acts Khalil committed, Republicans say they’re willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt.
Sen. Thom Tillis said he’s “OK with” Khalil’s deportation as long as there’s a “legal basis,” adding that he didn’t like some protests: “I found the protesting, like the ones out in my front yard back in Christmas of last year, disgusting.”
“I have to assume there has to be something more to it for it to be something that would withstand the court proceedings you have to go through for removal. If he was a legal green card recipient, I have to assume it was a violation of some sort, and if that’s a legitimate violation, then that protestor should have known that when they protested,” Tillis said.
Rep. Kevin Kiley told NOTUS he thought the arrest showed a tough stance from the administration against the wave of demonstrations on college campuses. (It was estimated in May last year that 8% of college students had participated on either side of these demonstrations.)
“It’s incredibly refreshing that the administration is proactively seeking to hold universities accountable and to send a message that if you are someone who has come from another country to support the terrorist organization Hamas on our campuses, then you’re not someone that’s going to remain here,” Kiley told NOTUS.