In early March, Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holding graduate student at Columbia University, was arrested in his university-owned apartment in association with pro-Palestinian protests last year. He was later taken to a detention facility in Louisiana, where he is currently being held.
“The White House has alleged without evidence that Khalil distributed pro-Hamas materials at a protest and that he failed to disclose his work with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) on his green card application,” Time Magazine wrote in an article published on Tuesday, April 1, 2025.
Later that month, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Fulbright Scholar and Ph.D. student at Tufts University, was abducted by five plainclothes officers on the streets of Boston. The reason for her arrest? According to the Associated Press (AP), federal investigators alleged without evidence that Öztürk was involved in activities supporting Hamas, which has been designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group. The reality? Last year, Öztürk co-wrote an op-ed in The Tufts Daily criticizing Columbia’s response to demands of student protestors. These two high-profile arrests and abductions of university students in the past month bring freedom of speech, student rights, and the authority of the federal government into question.
While the reasoning for the arrests are vague and fallacious, there appears to be a disturbing pattern emerging. The Trump administration is actively targeting international students who have been involved with pro-Palestinian protests, which sets a dangerous precedent. Students exercising their right to freedom of speech and assembly are being arrested on the basis of their citizenship and/or country of birth. According to the Supreme Court’s 1945 decision in Bridges v. Wixon, freedom of speech and press extends to foreign-born residents living in the United States.
While the Trump administration argues that pro-Palestinian protestors and organizations are supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization, this is almost never the case.
US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) is one of the largest U.S.-based political organizations behind the pro-Palestine movement. It reports that its mission is to end the mass violence against the Palestinian people by ceasing military funding to Israel. Nowhere on the USCPR’s website does it say that this movement is in support of Hamas, and, if that isn’t convincing, a quick Google search will reveal several articles that display similar definitions of what this protest movement is actually about. It’s both inherently irresponsible and false to try to claim that students are supporting a terrorist organization, and then weaponize this falsehood to target, arrest, and abduct students.
However, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Historical precedent will remind us of a time when others were arrested and sometimes even deported because of their beliefs. In the late 1940s and through the 1950s, a powerful political sensation swept the United States. Known as McCarthyism, this movement began when Senator McCarthy claimed to possess a list of communists working within the U.S. Department of State during the Second Red Scare. The rest of McCarthy’s short-lived political career was spent conducting hearings and investigating alleged communists. Many people were blacklisted, fired from jobs, unlawfully imprisoned, and deported because of these accusations. The American Heritage Dictionary defines McCarthyism as “the practice of publicizing accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence [or] the use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition.”
In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality Act was enacted. The transformed immigration system began increasing screenings of potential immigrants based on past or present activity with communist organizations. Additionally, that statute was used to deport individuals who seemed politically subversive or were accused of having communist ties, among other beliefs. Sound familiar?
To no surprise, this very law has been utilized as an explanation for the arrest of Khalil. In the “Notice to Appear” document for Khalil, the Department of Homeland Security cites the 1952 Act to justify pursuing the removal of Khalil from the United States entirely.
This evolution of McCarthyism has spurred a new witch hunt. Protesting students are being targeted by the federal government for utilizing their freedom of speech in order to stand up for their political beliefs, and unlawfully being threatened with termination of their residency statuses as well. Neither Khalil or Öztürk have had the opportunity to bring their case to court, and both are still jailed within the ICE facility in Louisiana. These actions are clearly injudicious, considering that international students and any individual residing within the United States usually possess the same Constitutional rights that citizens have.
While students with citizenship who have taken part in pro-Palestinian protests have also been threatened with a variety of consequences, including the withholding of diplomas, arrests, suspensions, or even expulsions, none of these students have been disappeared in the way that Khalil and Öztürk were by ICE. Khalil’s wife didn’t find out his location until the Monday after his abduction, according to NPR. Citizenship status should not determine whether or not someone receives due process.
Using scare tactics and intimidation seems to be the new form of government efficiency that Trump has been so proudly touting in order to rid the country of what he calls “enemies of the state.” The AP reports of several other students being targeted by ICE, including Ranjani Srinivasan, who says that she didn’t even help organize protests at Columbia yet was accused by the Trump administration of advocating for violence and terrorism. After this accusation, Srinivasan self-deported to Canada. The claims that Khalil and Öztürk are supporting terrorist organizations through their political activism are similarly baseless. The federal government can’t even get its facts straight on the political activity of the three students, overtly exaggerating their alleged involvement, and is going so far as to accuse them of terrorism. In line with McCarthyism, it seems that any level of political involvement is subject to investigation and arrest.
Because of this clear historical precedent, we can learn from those who lived through the era of McCarthyism. It’s clear that the Trump administration will not hesitate to trespass against the rights of individuals in the United States. What’s left now is to remain aware and recognize that this isn’t normal. Amplifying concerns regarding individual rights and freedoms is what kept victims of McCarthy’s attacks within the stream of cultural relevance, and that is what needs to be done now. The Trump administration would have rather had these arrests and abductions remain secret, but public backlash has been apparent—and important. There have been dozens of protests against this administration’s actions, and keeping the stories of Khalil, Öztürk, and others within the forefront of public perception is how we can fight back against these prejudiced arrests.
Julia Podgorski is a member of the class of 2028 and can be reached at jp********@******an.edu.
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