On March 8th, ICE agents stormed the apartment of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist. These Gestapo thugs arrested Khalil in front of his pregnant wife, first claiming that Khalil’s student visas had been revoked and then that his green card had been revoked. Khalil has yet to be seen in person by either his wife or his lawyer, and the government has not even confirmed where he is being held! This is an outrageous escalation of repression against people speaking out against the US-Israel genocide in Gaza, a well-known activist essentially being disappeared by the US government for exercising free expression. 

The targeting and kidnapping of Khalil is the first round of the promised Trump crackdown on pro-Palestine speech and action, a ramp-up of repression that has been aided and abetted at every turn by campus administrators. In 2016, during Trump’s first presidency, Columbia University made all sorts of bloviating promises about protecting undocumented students and keeping the campus safe from ICE. When students rightfully and righteously threw down for Palestine in the spring of 2024,  Columbia called the NYPD on its own students, setting the tone for a nationwide wave of campus repression. 

Campus administrators across the country followed the Columbia playbook, throwing brutal cops at their own students, and using probation, suspensions, and expulsions to silence the movement that rose demanding and end to the US-Israel genocide in Gaza that left over 100,000 Palestinians dead, and to demand the US institutions stop profiting from the occupation of Palestine. While insisting on their liberal bonafides, campus administrators created the ammunition that the Trump government is using to launch this unprecedented assault on free expression. 

Students and others who have stood up for Palestine: let this be a wake up call. If you tolerate ICE-gestapo raids, if you tolerate deportation threats against other students, what else will you tolerate? Will you sit back and watch your friends and colleagues be deported, or will you fight for people like Mahmoud Khalil, for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians martyred, for the millions of immigrants facing deportation back to countries destroyed by the U.S. Empire itself?

Behind Enemy Lines is committed to standing with Mahmoud Khalil, and everyone else under attack for standing up for Palestine! As people who live in this country, we believe that we have an obligation to stand with the courageous resisters who are targeted for repression by the US government, whether they’re facing repression in the streets, in courtrooms, or on campuses. The attack on Mahmoud Khalil is an attack on everyone in the US who is standing up for Palestine. We must get his back!