FREE MAHMOUD KHALIL NOW
The DETENTION of MAHMOUD KHALIL is a FASCIST ATTACK on FREE SPEECH and ACADEMIC FREEDOM
The TRUMP FASCIST REGIME MUST GO!
RefuseFascism.org demands the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil. His arrest and detention is an illegal and immoral attack on basic rights, academic freedom, and the rule of law. It marks an ominous and vicious escalation in the Trump regime’s fascist program. It is a dramatic further assault on the rights of all immigrants and all of society: crushing dissent, neutering academia; forbidding critical thinking and free expression. Everyone who cares about justice needs to stand with Mahmoud Khalil.
Last Saturday, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate student and leading Palestinian student activist was swept up by the Department of Homeland Security. Khalil was whisked away from his wife (8 months pregnant and a U.S. citizen) and is currently incarcerated in an immigrant detention camp in Louisiana.
Shortly after Khalil’s arrest, Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened to revoke the student visas and green cards of foreign-born students who have spoken out against Israel’s US-backed oppression of Palestine.
This is a lethal acceleration of the Trump regime’s fascist wars on immigrants, on free speech, on the right of public assembly, on universities and academic freedom, and on the open political life of all society.
An Algerian national of Palestinian heritage, Mahmoud Kahlil holds a green card that grants him permanent legal status. Along with everyone else on U.S. soil, he cannot legally be deprived of his right to free speech, political association, and due process under the U.S. Constitution
Khalil was snatched up and threatened with deportation with no prior hearing before an immigration court – a brazen violation of his constitutional right to due process.
Rubio tried to justify this brutal extra-judicial kidnapping by claiming that Khalil is aligned with “a terrorist group.”
Mahmoud Khalil’s kidnapping comes in the wake of Trump’s recent pledge to imprison and deport foreign students and “agitators” who have raised their voices against a U.S.-backed Israeli genocide that has killed at least 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
Celebrating this brazen violation of Khalil’s free speech and due process rights, Trump called Mahmoud Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” and claimed that his apprehension is “the first of many to come” on colleges and universities he claims are harboring “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic,[and] anti-American activity…Your presence is contrary,” Trump told pro-Palestine students, “to our national and foreign policy interests.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union rightly calls Mahmoud Khalil’s incarceration “an extreme attack on his First Amendment rights…Ripping a student from their home, challenging their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint will chill student speech and advocacy across campus. Political speech should never be a basis for punishment, or lead to deportation.”
Khalil has been arrested and incarcerated in a brazen act of family separation meant to punish him for leading peaceful protests that opposed US foreign policy and the conduct of Israel.
This outrageous and criminal act accelerates and escalates the imposition of fascist rule in America. As is highlighted in Refuse Fascism’s new “Call to Conscience:”
“‘Fascism’ is not a curse word. Fully imposed, it is a radically oppressive and repressive form of rule over the people of this country, with devastating impact on the people of the world. The rule of law is shredded. Civil and democratic rights are eliminated. Dissent is piece by piece criminalized. The truth is bludgeoned. Group after group demonized and targeted along a trajectory that leads to catastrophe…In the grotesque form of Donald Trump and his vicious conglomeration of Nazi-saluting strategists and shock troops, a fascist regime has come to power. They have learned and hardened from the last eight years, and they are on an accelerated path to remaking the country in their image…The clock ticks toward the midnight hour. Each minute brings new shocks and jolts. Each second shatters lives….[We face] a fascist regime fighting to make this a country ruled by ‘America First’ xenophobia – where the hatred of ‘foreigners’ means terrorizing whole neighborhoods and peoples, tossing millions of immigrants into the shadows and offshore concentration camps and death through deportation.”
NO! We respect the dignity and humanity of every person no matter where they were born! We respect the right to voice dissenting political opinion without fear of arrest, incarceration, torture, and deportation! We respect the sanctity of free thought and public expression within and beyond American colleges and universities.
Far too many institutions are accommodating and capitulating in advance. We, the people, must act.
There can be no reconciliation with this fascism except on the terms of the fascists. It must be stopped before it fully consolidates in the world’s most powerful country. Waiting for the next elections will be too late. We cannot rely on the Democratic Party’s leadership who complacently rely on the very norms and processes that the Trump regime shreds by the hour. Only a very small number of Democrats in Congress have signed on a call from one of their fellow Congresspersons (the Palestinian American Rashida Tlaib) for Khalil’s immediate release,
The unjust arrest, detention, and attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil is an example of why Refuse Fascism calls for millions to join us in the streets refusing to allow business as usual when that business is shoving fascist rule down our throats. We need MANY VOICES AND BODIES DEMANDING: THE TRUMP FASCIST REGIME MUST GO! With this we can and must create a political crisis in which the Trump regime cannot govern and implement their fascist program or even maintain their hold on power.
In the NAME of HUMANITY, WE REFUSE to ACCEPT a FASCIST AMERICA!
The FASCIST TRUMP REGIME MUST GO!