CNN
—
In the days after immigration officers detained a pro-Palestinian activist on campus, the head of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School has been inundated with inquiries from students seeking answers to basic questions.
“I have been individually counseling students on whether or not they should travel abroad, on whether or not they should be posting on social media, on whether or not they can and should participate in a demonstration,” said Elora Mukherjee, a law school professor and clinic director.
“Activities that were taken for granted just a week ago are now questions that students are asking: Should I do this? Should I do that? What are the risks?”
Last weekend’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian refugee whose green card was revoked over his involvement in demonstrations at Columbia University, is having a chilling effect on college campuses across America, where students say they’re being forced to think carefully before exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech.
“This case sets a terrifying precedent for all students, particularly international students, particularly those on visas and green cards, but I think students in general should be horrified,” said Zaid, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of retribution. “What precedent are we setting for this entire nation, and for our First Amendment, if Khalil is deported, and who will be the next group targeted?”
At Columbia, which has nearly 24,000 international students, Mukherjee said the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic is advising concerned students to keep a low profile to avoid the attention of the Trump administration.
International students as well as those who are undocumented or have tenuous immigration status “are now terrified about what might happen to them,” she said.
“These feel like very dangerous times. I’m inviting students to think through factors that may put them at heightened risk and encouraging and trying to empower people to make the decisions that will be best for their lives,” Mukherjee said.
“For some people, that means staying off social media. For others, that mode of expression is core to their identities, and they’re willing to take the risk. But what I am emphasizing is that there are risks that were unforeseen and unprecedented.”
Video released of Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest by plainclothes officers
President Donald Trump on social media described Khalil as “a radical foreign pro-Hamas” student who engaged in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.” His detention, Trump warned, “is the first arrest of many to come.”
Khalil, who completed his master’s degree from Columbia in December, is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant. A federal judge in New York has temporarily blocked his deportation and he remains in ICE custody in Louisiana. Trump said he would be stripped of his green card and deported. He has not been charged with any crime.
The government’s case has “no basis in law,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union and part of his legal team, told CNN on Friday. She said Khalil was essentially kidnapped “based on an accusation that he has the wrong political ideas, and he has expressed them.” She called his detention “an attempt to bully the universities into submission” and “intimidate” students and faculty from speaking out.
On Thursday, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested another person involved in Pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia, citing immigration violations related to overstaying her visa. Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from the West Bank, had her visa terminated in January 2022 for lack of attendance. She was arrested by local law enforcement last year for her involvement in what the Department of Homeland Security described as “pro-Hamas protests.” A separate Columbia student has self-deported to Canada, the department said.
While Columbia and its students have been targeted so far, concerns extend far beyond the Ivy League school.
“There’s people in our community who are particularly vulnerable in this moment,” Zaid said, referring to the UC Berkeley campus. “There’s a fine line most people are toeing right now between being paralyzed with fear, such that they don’t go out, they don’t protest, they don’t engage in any activism, at the same time taking legal precautions.”
College students and educators across the US are closely watching the Trump administration’s escalating crackdown on Columbia over allegations of antisemitism. The actions by Washington against Columbia include the detention of the prominent pro-Palestinian student activist, the cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts, as well as making federal funding contingent on the banning of masks at protests, giving the university president sole disciplinary power over students and empowering campus police to make arrests.
The “dismantlement” of the First Amendment and of federal funding “will have a ripple effect on generations to come,” said Zaid, the UC Berkeley student.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, on social media described the Trump administration’s demands as basically saying, “We’ll destroy Columbia unless you destroy it first.”
Jaffer was referring to a joint letter to Columbia from the US Department of Education and other agencies outlining preconditions for “formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.”
A Columbia spokesperson said the university was “reviewing the letter,” adding that it’s “committed at all times to advancing our mission, supporting our students, and addressing all forms of discrimination and hatred on our campus.”
Robert McCaughey, an emeritus professor of history at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College and author of a history of Columbia, said the Trump administration’s tensions with the university are “just about unique, and that it turns so quickly on finances is also a suggestion of its uniqueness.”
“And when they’re coming after the students, they’re coming after the money, too,” he said. “There, I think Columbia has maybe a slightly outsized vulnerability because it has a substantial number of foreign students who, if they were cut off from attending, they couldn’t get visas or whatever, that would be a substantial financial hit on the university as well.”
At Harvard University on Thursday, nearly 200 faculty members, staff and students held a rally in support of Khalil and to call out the Trump administration’s actions against colleges. Violet Brown, a junior who’s an organizer with Harvard Jews for Palestine as well as other pro-Palestinian groups, was among them – one of the largest campus protests, she said, since last spring.
“It’s definitely scary watching what is happening at Columbia,” she said. “Columbia showed us, and I hope that it showed our administrators, too … that no level of acquiescence or obedience to a frankly fascist administration is going to do you any good because Columbia took arguably the strictest, most violent approach to cracking down on protests.”
Last spring, the student coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest demanded the university divest from its financial ties to Israel and a call for a ceasefire in Gaza. After the university missed its deadline for an agreement on divestment, students and people unaffiliated with the school entered Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside. The university called the police to remove the protesters and more than 110 people were arrested, according to the NYPD.
Columbia said on Thursday that it has expelled, suspended or temporarily revoked the degrees of students who occupied Hamilton Hall in April 2024. It’s unclear how many students were suspended or expelled. A university spokesperson said “student privacy obligations” prevented them from confirming how many were disciplined.
Tensions flared at US universities last spring as some administrators called in law enforcement to break up protest encampments and arrest students participating in campus demonstrations that erupted after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack in southern Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
“For international students, there might be a reason to be extra careful about kind of being seen,” Brown said of protest activity this spring. “But if anything, I think the attack on free speech we’re seeing right now is mobilizing people in a way that the genocide in Gaza or the West Bank never has, which is really unfortunate.”
Richard Solomon, a doctoral student in political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an organizer for the MIT Coalition for Palestine, called Khalil’s detention “a pathetic attempt to criminalize free speech” and said the arrest “has actually galvanized our community.”
“People are more engaged, angry, and ready for concrete action,” he said. “Every official who called the cops on their own students … every colleague who encouraged others to ‘keep their heads down,’ shares responsibility for the Trump administration disappearing a student.”
Benjamin Kersten, a UCLA doctoral student and member of the pro-Palestinian group Jewish Voice for Peace, said even some international and undocumented students not involved in the anti-war movement pushing for divestment from Israel are staying away from the Los Angeles campus after Khalil’s detention.
“It does sort of like up the stakes for people within the movement but also for people beyond the movement,” he said. “Now this sort of work to free Mahmoud Khalil is very much a part of calling on universities to not comply with the orders of the Trump administration and to take measures to protect students, to commit to protecting the freedom of speech, the right to protest… It makes the urgency all the more clear. It does make me want to raise my voice louder.”
Three days after Khalil’s arrest on March 8, Columbia’s Journalism School held a meeting with students to talk about concerns over free speech and reporting at a time when federal immigration agents removed the recent graduate from university housing. Jelani Cobb, the journalism school dean, wrote on social media that one question raised was what the department “was doing to protect visa-holding students from potential arrest and deportation.”
“I went on to say that I would do everything in my power to defend our journalists and their right to report but that none of us had the capacity to stop DHS from jeopardizing their safety,” Cobb wrote, noting the importance of offering an “honest rendering of the risks” and threats in reporting about the situation on campus.
Stuart Karle, an adjunct professor and media law expert, told CNN that he urged international students at the meeting “to focus on completing their course work and graduating.”
“And to make sure they can do that, they’re far better off not making themselves a target for enforcement,” he said, adding they should refrain from commentary on social media about topics such as the Middle East or Ukraine.
“There is no point to being the person they pick to make an example of… Every clue says that the administration is focused on Columbia,” Karle said, referring to Khalil’s arrest. “The shocking part … is that he has a green card. He’s not even on a student visa. That’s the part that cautions … to be really aware that the rules aren’t clear anymore. They’re different.”
