“Khalil spent the past year and a half leading an organization that effectively made large areas of Columbia University off-limits for Jewish Zionist students,” said David Litman of CAMERA.
Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and 12 fellow members of Congress wrote to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on March 11 accusing federal officers of a “direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country” when they arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate who led anti-Israel protests on the Ivy League campus.
Legal experts told JNS that the Columbia University Apartheid Divest leader’s deportation case is about alleged fraud and terror ties, not the First Amendment.
“People try to distract from what’s actually going on by framing it as a speech issue,” Tal Fortgang, a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told JNS. “This isn’t about protesting. It’s about unlawful conduct.”