Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and green card holder, was an active participant in a political movement on his campus. The political movement called for the university to divest from arms companies and from a state deemed by the International Court of Justice to plausibly be committing genocide. Khalil has not been charged with a crime, let alone convicted. His role in the movement was that of negotiator and mediator with the school’s administration — that is, engaging in speech.

But Khalil is Palestinian, and the movement in question is for Palestinian freedom and against Israel’s eliminationist assault on Gaza. So, as of Saturday night, Khalil, a legal permanent resident, is being held without charge at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detention center. His attorney and his wife — a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant — were unable to find Khalil in the sprawling ICE carceral system for over 24 hours.

On Saturday night, Department of Homeland Security agents descended on Khalil’s apartment, a Columbia University-owned property near the school’s Manhattan campus. Khalil called his attorney, Amy Greer, who spoke with the agents on the phone. First, they reportedly said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke the graduate’s student visa. The attorney told them that Khalil has a green card, which Khalil’s wife produced as proof. Then, according to reports, the agent told Greer that they were revoking Khalil’s green card. The agents threatened Khalil’s pregnant wife with arrest too, and then took her husband away.

“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” wrote U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on X on Sunday, linking to The Associated Press’s coverage of Khalil’s arrest.

There is no going back from this point: President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to deport a man solely for his First Amendment-protected activity, without due process. By all existing legal standards, this is illegal and unconstitutional: a violation of First Amendment protections, and the Fifth Amendment-protected........

© The Intercept