Students gathered to protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student at Columbia University on Thursday.
Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the U.S. who played a prominent role in Columbia’s protests against Israel, was taken into custody by several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents Saturday evening. Initially held in a detention center in New Jersey, he has since been transferred to an ICE facility in Louisiana.
“[Khalil] still is on a valid green card and on a student visa,” Binx Hilton, a freshman at the College of Design, said. “I know that those can be canceled, but he was a Palestinian activist doing protests in favor of his own country.”
Hilton, the protest organizer, also called for increased free speech protections for international students.
“Students should not have to worry about attending protests or expressing their opinions for fear of deportation,” Hilton said.
Liliana Cochiaro, a first-year in elementary education, emphasized the broader implications of Khalil’s arrest, describing it as part of a larger pattern of First Amendment violations in recent months.
“It’s really scary, and this is just one event in a long line of things that has been happening in the number of First Amendment right violations that have occurred within the past, say, two months,” Cochiaro said. “You could have picked any of the events that have happened in the past two months to be out here for. I think it’s really time for us to start getting the message out there.”
Several passersby stopped to converse with the protesters, some grabbing a sign and joining in. Others simply engaged in conversation.
“[Protesting] is the only way that progress happens, that is the only way that things actually get done,” Cochiaro said.
In addition to chants like “Who is next?” two demonstrators also handed out fliers promoting a new student organization, Students Resisting Fascism. One of the founders, Riley Lester, a senior studying kinesiology and health, said the club was established Thursday morning and aims to “speak out against our oppressive government.”
“It’s a battle against the elite corporatist government against the working class,” Lester said. “It’s not Democrat-Republican. It’s not black versus white. It’s rich versus poor, is what it is. We are trying to spread class consciousness because that’s what our fight is about.”
