They are disappearing people in the U.S.

The detention of Mahmoud Khalil is meant to send a message and strike fear

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Getting ‘disappeared’ comes to America

It appears the Trump Administration has declared war on Columbia. Not the country, the private university in New York. The school was the site of a particularly large and vocal Pro-Palestine protest last year and since taking office, Trump and his Administration have made it their mission to punish the school.

That effort took an extremely dark turn this weekend when the main spokesman for the campus protest, Palestinian Mahmoud Khalil, was detained in the lobby of his campus apartment complex in front of his pregnant American wife.

Department of Homeland Security Agents claimed his student visa was revoked, when he, his wife, and attorney on the phone, told the agents he was now on a Green Card, they then claimed that was revoked and took him away.

Neither his wife, nor his attorneys, can get hold of him since.

Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil

I served in Iraq just after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Once when I asked my local village sheik why people didn’t report things like bombs being placed in the roads, or attacks on the Coalition he explained the perspective of 30 years under a dictator.

Dr. Mohammed said, “when you live under a dictatorship you learn not to see things. You don’t want to see the men in black cars taking away the family next door and never hearing from them again…”

He went on to tell me more, but I remember thinking how blessed I was that I didn’t live in that kind of a country where men from the government could roll up, grab you, and simply disappear you into the night.

Until now.

The war begins

Leave no doubt that this is a war on free speech and protest. Everything Trump and his evil minions like Stephen Miller do are tests at first then expansion. This war on freedom of speech is a perfect case.

The war on Columbia and other schools started earlier this week when Trump announced via Truth Social that he would punish schools that allow “illegal protests.”

Then he turned right around on Friday and canceled some $400 million in grants and contracts with the school. The New York Times has the story.

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it had canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University, an extraordinary step that it said was necessary because of what it described as the school’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment.

Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said in a universitywide email on Friday night that the school is taking the administration’s actions seriously. Columbia is “committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns,” she wrote.

The announcement escalated the administration’s targeting of Columbia, where protests last year over the war in Gaza set off a nationwide debate over free speech, campus policing and antisemitism, and led to similar demonstrations at schools nationwide.

They weren’t done

On Friday they swept in and Prem Thakker at Zeteo has the story.

On Saturday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers detained Mahmoud Khalil – a recent Columbia University graduate who helped lead the Gaza solidarity encampment – at his New York City home, an apartment building owned by the school, says advocates.

According to the advocates, at around 8:30 PM, Khalil and his wife – who is eight months pregnant – had just unlocked the door to their building when two plainclothes DHS agents pushed inside behind them. The agents allegedly did not identify themselves at first, instead asking for Khalil’s identity before detaining him.

The agents proceeded to tell Khalil’s wife that if she did not leave her husband and go to their apartment, they would arrest her too. The agents claimed that the State Department had revoked Khalil’s student visa, with one agent presenting what he claimed was a warrant on his cell phone. But Khalil, according to advocates, has a green card. Khalil’s wife went to their apartment to get the green card.

“He has a green card,” an agent apparently said on the phone, confused by the matter. But then after a moment, the agent claimed that the State Department had “revoked that too.”

Since Khalil was detained he has essentially disappeared into the system. According to reports he was initially detained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in downtown New York, pending an appearance before an immigration judge. His lawyer has since said they now do not know his precise whereabouts.

They were initially told he was sent to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. But when his 8-months pregnant wife tried to visit him at that facility, she was told he wasn’t there. They are now reporting that they have received reports that he may be transferred as far away as Louisiana.

Don’t doubt the goal

Khalil served as a lead negotiator amid the Columbia Gaza solidarity encampment last spring. He had been one of the most visible faces of the protest and had appeared in several media interviews. At the time he reported he was on a student visa but its reported he has gained his green card since and graduated from Columbia.

But all of this was meant to send a message. How do we know? Well we know that the mastermind of the anti-immigration efforts of the Administration are none other than Temu Nosferatu himself, Stephen Miller. His wife, Katie, is now the attorney for DOGE, and reported making money from her outside work as well.

She tweeted this about the arrest.

Message sent…message received. They will use ICE and DOJ to go after people they decide are enemies of the state and disappear them into a labyrinth system where you will drain your bank accounts fighting for justice and may never see it.

Welcome to America in 2025.

Maybe we leaped ahead an hour today but we have instead fallen back to Germany in 1938. They won’t be stopping at campus protesters in this Administration. Count on it.

Time to get in the fight folks.