What To Know About Mahmoud Khalil, and Why His Green Card Was Revoked

Buried in the trove of Executive Orders signed by President Donald Trump in his first weeks in office was a directive linked to last year’s campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war.

The order called for the revocation of student visas for individuals suspected of sympathizing with Hamas. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said in a White House fact sheet announcing the move.

On Saturday night, agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) followed through on Trump's threat, detaining Mahmoud Khalil, an activist and former student of New York City's Columbia University, where pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year became a national lightning rod amid a debate about the Middle East conflict. Khalil, who was raised in Syria and is of Palestinian descent, played a prominent role in the public demonstrations at the university and served as a negotiator between protesters and university officials last spring. He graduated from Columbia with a master’s degree in December.

Khalil’s situation immediately drew international attention because of the reason he was detained, and because, according to his lawyer Amy Greer, he holds a green card, which allows individuals to live and work permanently in the United States.

In his notice to appear in immigration court, first reported by The Washington Post, the government said Khalil is a citizen of Algeria and that he could be deported under section 237 (a)(4)(C) (i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the Secretary of State the authority to deport non-citizens when they have "reasonable ground to believe that [their] presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The notice did not mention any crimes that the federal government believes Khalil may have committed.

Khalil is currently being held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La., roughly 1,300 miles away from his apartment, according to an ICE database. His wife, who is eight months pregnant, is a U.S. citizen and detailed the arrest in a statement shared with TIME, though she has declined to use her name. In the statement, she says the couple were followed and confronted by ICE agents as they were returning from an Iftar dinner. She said an agent threatened to arrest her too if she didn’t go upstairs to their apartment. "We were not shown any warrant and the ICE officers hung up the phone on our lawyer," read her statement.

Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center of Constitutional Rights who is on Khalil’s legal team, told reporters Wednesday that Khalil was arrested for his viewpoints, which Azmy warned could set a dangerous precedent. “Mr. Khalil’s detention has nothing to do with security,” he said. “It is only about repression. The United States government has taken the position that it can arrest, detain and seek to deport a lawful permanent resident, exclusively because of his peaceful, constitutionally protected activism, in this case, activism in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

In a statement, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” and linked his arrest to Trump’s Executive Order. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who ultimately made the decision to try to deport Khalil, told reporters on Wednesday that the case was not about free speech: “This is about people that don't have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card."

Khalil’s lawyers said that he felt compelled to speak out about the conflict in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since Israel began a bombing and ground campaign in response to Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack. “He is committed to calling on the rest of the world to protect the rights of Palestinians under international law and to stop enabling violence against Palestinians,” his lawyers said in a court filing Monday.

Trump’s immigration officials have not provided evidence to support their accusations against Khalil or other students. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday alleged that Khalil distributed pro-Hamas flyers on Columbia’s campus, a claim that his lawyers rejected. “Whatever flyers the White House spokesperson may have been talking about, that is certainly not in the government's position in court,” said Ramzi Kassem, the founding director of CLEAR, a legal clinic, who is part of Khalil’s legal team.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside New York City’s City Hall and Washington Square Park on Monday and Tuesday decrying his arrest; at least 13 people were arrested in connection to the protests, according to CNN. Additional events demanding Khalil’s release have taken place across the country, including at UCLA and Stanford, with more scheduled this week.

Khalil’s arrest came just days after Trump announced he would revoke $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University, accusing the school of not doing enough to prevent antisemitism on campus. To critics, both the cutoff in funding and Khalil’s detainment are part of a broader campaign by the Trump Administration to silence political speech critical of U.S. foreign policy.

Here’s what to know about Khalil’s case, and why his green card status suggests a potential shift in U.S. immigration policy under the Trump Administration:

Can a green card holder be deported?

While green card holders enjoy many of the same rights as U.S. citizens, they can still face deportation under certain conditions, typically for criminal behavior or violations of immigration law, says Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired immigration law professor at Cornell Law School.

Foreign nationals can also lose their visas for endorsing or being associated with terrorist groups, but only if the government can provide material evidence. The Trump Administration has not provided any written evidence to support Khalil’s deportation beyond Rubio’s determination under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Khalil’s lawyers have said there is no indication that their client has committed any crime or violated the terms of his residency, and that the Trump Administration appears to be targeting him for his political activism and vocal opposition to Israeli policies. Immigration law experts note that deporting a green card holder solely for their political beliefs would likely violate the First Amendment, which protects free speech and the right to protest.

Yale-Loehr pointed to a Ragbir v. Homan, a 2018 decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that held that a non-citizen with a final removal order could not be removed if the removal was only because they were retaliating against their free speech.

Revoking a green card is also quite rare, and typically requires a hearing before an immigration judge. The process is generally lengthy and requires clear evidence of wrongdoing, and given the immense backlogs in immigration courts, it could take years before he gets a hearing before an immigration judge. If Khalil’s green card is ultimately revoked as a result of his activism, immigration experts say it would mark a disturbing shift in how the U.S. government interprets the scope of its power over lawful permanent residents.

The burden of proof in deportation cases

In any deportation case, the burden of proof rests with the government to demonstrate that the individual has violated U.S. immigration laws. Typically, this would involve criminal convictions or other serious legal violations. In Khalil’s case, the government would need to prove that his actions go beyond protected political speech and that his associations or activities pose a genuine national security threat. His legal team maintains that there is no legitimate grounds for revoking his green card or detaining him.

“The government would need to prove that he’s done something more than just speaking out, like offering material support to Hamas,” Yale-Loehr says. “That would be a ground of deportability.”

“They can't deport only for free speech advocacy,” he adds, “but if they were able to prove that he offered material support to Hamas by donating to their cause or something, then that's obviously concerning.”

Tom Homan, the Trump Administration’s border czar, told Fox Business on Monday that federal authorities “absolutely can” deport someone who is in the country legally: “I mean, did he violate the terms of his visa? Did he violate the terms of his residency here, you know, committing crimes, attacking Israeli students, locking down buildings, destroying property? Absolutely, any resident alien who commits a crime is eligible for deportation,” Homan added. On Wednesday, Homan went a step further and called Khalil a “national security threat,” claiming that “free speech has limitations.”

"Coming to this country either on a visa or becoming a resident alien is a great privilege, but there are rules associated with that. You might have been able to get away with that stuff in the last administration, but not this administration," Homan said.

Trump’s expanding use of executive power

The Khalil case is part of a broader trend in which the Trump Administration has sought to expand its use of immigration law to remove individuals deemed to be a threat to the United States. The effort is in line with Trump’s actions from his first term, which included creating a task force to review whether individuals had lied on their immigration forms.