And Now The Disappearings Begin
Before I write my usual weekly summary of the news, I feel that I need to address the forced disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident of the United States. I call it a forced disappearance, because that’s exactly what it is. It is an attempt by security forces to kidnap and hide somebody for the purpose of placing them beyond the protection of the law.
The recent habeas petition filed by Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyers makes clear that the goal of the Trump Administration was to hide Khalil from his lawyers. According to the petition,
The New York Field Office and Respondent Joyce [acting director of ICE’s New York field office] directed Mr. Khalil’s arrest and detention in New York, New York; told his counsel that he was being taken to 26 Federal Plaza in New York, New York; and entered his location on the ICE detainee locator as being in New York, New York. At the time of filing, the detainee locator stated that Mr. Khalil was held in New York, New York, information upon which his counsel reasonably relied to identify his location. To the extent the New York Field Office and Respondent Joyce moved Mr. Khalil across state lines to New Jersey for a transitory period of time shortly before his habeas was filed, the New York Field Office prevented Mr. Khalil from communicating that information to his counsel in bad faith. Moreover, the New York Field Office then brought Mr. Khalil back across state lines to New York before then transferring him, after the filing of the instant petition, to Louisiana.
It is absolutely clear to me that whole goal of the Trump Administration, including putting Mr. Khalil into a privately operated detention facility in a very rural area of a very red state, is to deny him his legal representation and any semblance of due process of law.
Another distressing aspect of this incident is that the Trump Administration is not making any claims that Khalil violated any law whatsoever, even though that would make deporting Khalil legally and politically easier to accomplish. The Trump Administration are clearly trying to push the envelope here of what authoritarian policies they can get away with.
According to Trump Administration policy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has the right to initiate removal proceedings any U.S. noncitizen resident who has “presence or activities” that the administration deems “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The Trump Administration is not trying to deport Mahmoud Khalil because of anything he did, but because Mr. Khalil engaged in the thoughtcrime of supporting a foreign policy that is in opposition to the Trump Administration’s foreign policy.
Other important facts highlighted in Khalil’s habeas petition:
Khalil did not take part in the tent cities or the occupation of buildings during pro-Palestinian protests on the Columbia University campus in 2024. Instead, he was a mediator between the protesters and the administration. He is of Palestinian descent and obviously has a pro-Palestinian view, but by attacking him, the Trump Administration can also chill the speech of U.S. citizens who are pro-Palestinian advocates.
The number of the Trump administration’s executive order to “combat campus antisemitism,” which is part of the basis for trying to deport Khalil, is 14188. This is not mentioned in the petition, but 14 and 88 are both recognized as anti-Semitic symbols by the Anti-Defamation League’s own web page. It is obvious to me that Donald Trump or his alt-right fan boys are trolling the Jewish community here.
In his own rhetoric, Mahmoud Khalil frequently emphasizes the interconnectedness of anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinian bias. In the spring of 2024, Khalil told CNN, “As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish
people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand and you cannot achieve one without the other.” Donald Trump unwittingly illustrates Khalil’s point frequently, such as when he called Senator Chuck Schumer “a Palestinian” and “a proud member of Hamas.”An ICE Agent named Hernandez deliberately hung up on Khalil’s attorney and later attempted to bar Khalil from speaking to his attorney again. Later on, Khalil witnessed another agent approaching Hernandez to say, “the White House is requesting an update.” This makes it clear to me that the detention of Mr. Khalil is not the work of overzealous agents, but a vendetta directed out of the White House itself.
The petition shows that the Trump Administration may be acting at the behest of a far right Zionist organization called Betar USA, which provided the administration with a list of pro-Palestinian students to deport this January. At a UCLA pro-Palestinian protest in October 2024, Betar urged police to get violent against pro-Palestinian protesters and, if the police did not, they would do so themselves. Betar USA is also historically connected to a fascist Israeli organization of the same name, which was so friendly with Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship, that Mussolini established a naval academy for Betar in Italy, as well as allowing Betar to train with Mussolini’s fascist troops.
Most ominously, when Donald Trump issued a statement on Truth Social about Mr. Khalil’s arrest, Trump bragged that it would be “the first arrest of many to come.”