Michael Hernandez
March 11, 2025•Update: March 11, 2025
WASHINGTON
Dozens of demonstrators marched through the US capital Monday, demanding that authorities release a pro-Palestinian student activist whom President Donald Trump has pledged to deport amid his wider crackdown on free speech.
Protesters marched roughly a half-mile to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters, seeking the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent legal resident and recent Columbia University graduate who helped lead an anti-war pro-Palestinian encampment on campus in April 2024.
"It's obvious why he is here. He was supposedly a Hamas sympathizer just because he organized a non-violent protest, on behalf of the Palestinians, at Columbia University. It was non-violent. He was completely within his rights," Laurie Gagne, a resident of the nearby state of Maryland, told Anadolu.
"He was doing more than a lot of citizens do for this country, to set us on a good course, on a course of justice, and this is how we treat him. I am ashamed for our country and I demand his release," she added.
Khalil was arrested Saturday night at his university-owned residence in New York City by plainclothes Department of Homeland Security agents who forced their way in, according to activists. He was taken into custody and then transferred to an immigration jail in Louisiana.
John, a Virginia resident who declined to provide his surname, said he would not weigh in on the merits of Khalil's activism but said the Trump administration's actions represent a grave violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech.
"I express no opinion on the speech involved, but I do express strong objection to any sort of action where a punitive action is being taken not in accordance with the law to punish that speech," he said.
Earlier Monday, Trump boasted of Khalil's arrest, saying it would be the "first arrest of many to come," further alleging that the Columbia grad is a “foreign pro-Hamas student.”
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” he wrote.
He accused pro-Palestinian student protesters of being “paid agitators” and warned that his administration would “find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Ayman Haddad, a Maryland resident, said the Trump administration has begun to employ "very suppressive tactics" in an attempt to curtail pro-Palestine activism.
"The United States is enacting many laws and executive orders to prevent us from expressing our opinion, from defending Palestinians, from defending human rights here at home in the United States and abroad," said Haddad. "It's started to feel like a police state more and more."
