Yesterday, Vermonters rallied outside the Federal courthouse in Burlington, demanding the release of Columbia University student and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil.
Khalil, 30, has had no charges filed against him, but was apprehended from university housing on Saturday. He is currently being detained at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, in Jena, Louisiana, far from his wife and attorneys. His wife, a U.S. citizen, is eight months pregnant with their first child.
Khalil was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. He moved to the U.S. in 2022, earning a master’s degree at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and resides in the United States with a green card.
Khalil was a prominent public-facing figure at Columbia University in New York during last year’s protests against Israel’s war crimes and genocide in Gaza. He was a lead negotiator with Columbia University administrators on behalf of the students’ Gaza solidarity encampment. While students at dozens of colleges across the country — including the University of Vermont — protested, occupied buildings or set up encampments in protest, Columbia became a media focal point, putting student activists there under heightened pressure from university officials, Zionist counter-protesters, and law enforcement, including city, state, and federal agents. According to a New York Times analysis from last summer, the total number of protester arrests at Columbia, 217, were second in the country only to UCLA’s 271.
Trump Administration officials label Khalil a terrorist-supporter, though they have not provided any evidence. President Trump posted on Truth Social that Khalil’s detention “is the first arrest of many to come,” a promise that social movement groups, from Palestine solidarity to immigrant rights, are taking seriously.
At the rally, Wafic Faour of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine said, “We have to stand with our migrants, and we have to keep our voices loud. We shouldn’t be afraid. We should stand with our students. They are in danger, many of our students are Muslims and Palestinians on F-1 visas, they are in danger.”
The Federal government is relying on the “foreign policy” provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which reads: “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” This provision gives the Secretary of State wide latitude in making a determination.
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Jesse Furman in the Southern District of New York put a hold on Khalil’s deportation, and extended that hold in an order earlier today to give the judge additional time to determine the constitutionality of the order.
Ashley Smith of the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation said to the assembled crowd in Burlington, “Let’s also be clear that the Trump administration didn’t start this new McCarthyism. In fact, it began under the Biden administration. It began under liberal bureaucrats in universities like UVM, ordering the repression, suspension, and expulsion of students. The Democrats open the door for what Trump is now doing to Palestine solidarity activists all across the country.”
Polling suggests that Democrats’ embrace of the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza played a significant role in why the Presidency is now in Republican hands. Polls throughout 2024 indicated majority opposition in the United States to sending arms and supplies to Israel, including a CBS News poll in June that found 61% opposed. The Biden-Harris Administration and Democratic Party leadership categorically rejected any halt or embargo to weapons transfers from the U.S. to Israel.
Roughly six million fewer people voted for Harris in 2024 than voted for Biden in 2020. An opinion poll released in January 2025, conducted by the Institute of Middle East Understanding and YouGov, surveyed voters who voted for Biden in 2020 but did not vote for Harris in 2024. When asked why they did not vote for Harris, the top reason stated was “Israel’s violence in Gaza.”
Patrick is a writer and organizer based in northern Vermont. He is on the editorial collective for The Rake Vermont.
