Fourteen House Democrats dispatched an emphatic letter Wednesday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, demanding the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate who has been arrested and detained based on accusations stemming from his campus advocacy for Palestinian rights. A legal resident of the United States who holds a green card and is married to a US citizen, Khalil was arrested Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and detained in Louisiana, as a part of a crackdown on dissent being cheered on by President Trump. That represents a grave threat to the right of anyone to dissent in the United States, say the House members. “We are horrified by the recent illegal abduction and now indefinite detention of Mahmoud Khalil —a U.S. legal permanent resident—by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, and we unequivocally demand his immediate release from DHS custody,” explained their letter, which recounted details of Khalil’s arrest and declared, “Based on these facts, Khalil’s constitutional rights have been violated.”

This statement is an important one at a moment when the civil liberties of so many Americans have been threatened by the increasingly authoritarian Trump administration. Yet, it is unsettling that only 14 representatives—roughly 3 percent of the House’s 435 members—chose to sign onto a letter that championed such basic premises of the US Constitution.

The signers of the letter—Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, Nydia Valasquez of New York, Delia Ramirez of Illinois, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Jasmine Crockett and Al Green of Texas, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, Ayanna Pressley and James McGovern of Massachusetts, Lateefah Simon of California, Andre Carson of Indiana, and Nikema Williams of Georgia—used scathing language to decry the arrest, and the role played by Trump in targeting Khalil. The president celebrated the arrest Monday in a Truth Social post that announced, “Following my previously signed executive orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a radical foreign pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come.” A DHS spokesperson claimed that Khalil was arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.” Yet, when demonstrations against the Israeli military assault on Gaza erupted on the Columbia campus last spring, Khalil emerged as a leading advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza who decried both Israeli government policies and antisemitism— telling CNN in April, “There is, of course, no place for antisemitism,” and saying, “As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand and you cannot achieve one without the other.”

The administration’s mischaracterizations of Khalil have been challenged by students and professors who know him, and by his lawyer, Amy Greer, who argues, “He was chosen as an example to stifle entirely lawful dissent, in violation of the First Amendment. The government’s objective is as transparent as it is unlawful.”

The members of Congress who wrote to Secretary Noem were, if anything, more pointed in their remarks. They wrote:

As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader and negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University campus, protesting the Israeli government’s brutal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and his university’s complicity in this oppression. This illegal political justification has been stated clearly by figures throughout the administration, including the president himself. We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country. Khalil’s arrest is an act of anti-Palestinian racism intended to silence the Palestine solidarity movement in this country, but this lawless abuse of power and political repression is a threat to all Americans. President Trump has threatened that “this is the first arrest of many to come,” and, if unchecked, this authoritarian playbook will be applied to any and all opposition to his undemocratic agenda. Mahmoud Khalil must be freed from DHS custody immediately. He is a political prisoner, wrongfully and unlawfully detained, who deserves to be at home in New York preparing for the birth of his first child. Universities throughout the country must protect their students from this vile assault on free thought and expression, and DHS must immediately refrain from any further illegal arrests targeting constitutionally protected speech and activity.

Current Issue

January 2026 Issue

The House members who signed the letter are not the only members of Congress who have spoken up. Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has embraced calls to free Khalil and declared, ”Detaining a recent grad student for exercising his right to free speech is something we’d expect from Russia—NOT AMERICA.” Senator Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, issued a stirring denunciation of the arrest, saying, “If our new reality is that a president can disappear an opposition protester, with no charges filed against then, we are not America any longer. Today it’s Mahmoud Khalil. Tomorrow, it’s me or you.” US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has also spoken up, warning, “If the federal government can disappear a legal US permanent resident without reason or warrant, then they can disappear US citizens too.” US Representative Jerry Nadler, the New York Democrat who formerly chaired the House Judiciary Committee and is a cochair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus, says, “The warrantless arrest of any legal permanent resident seemingly solely over their speech is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights to free speech.” And US Representative Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who is now the ranking member of the Judiciary Commitee, argues, “The detention of Mahmoud Khalil is ripped straight from the authoritarian playbook. His arrest sets an extremely dangerous and chilling precedent from an administration that is hellbent on wielding fear and intimidation as weapons to crush political dissent. All Americans, including those who strongly disagree with Khalil’s speech, should be outraged by this brazen attack on our fundamental freedoms.”

Yet Durbin, AOC, Murphy, Nadler, Raskin, and the House members who signed Tuesday’s letter remain congressional outliers. Most congressional Democrats have remained silent, or said, as House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) did, that they are “ monitoring” the situation.

Top Republicans, taking a break from recent preaching about the importance of free speech, have celebrated the arrest. House Speaker Mike Johnson went so far as to say, “This guy apparently was a mastermind,” and then announce, in Trumpian language, “If you are on a student visa and you’re in America and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home. We’re going to arrest your tail and we’re going to send you home where you belong.”

The thing is that members of Congress do not swear an oath to defend illegal actions undertaken by partisan allies in the White House. Nor do they pledge to ignore assaults on the right to dissent. Members of Congress swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and to “bear true faith and allegiance” to that promise. In so doing, they commit themselves to uphold basic freedoms—not to permit the arrest, detention, and deportation of students who dare to exercise the rights outlined in the First Amendment to a Constitution that explicitly protects their freedom of speech and their right to assembly and to petition for the redress of grievances.