On the evening of March 8, recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil and his wife unlocked the door to their apartment building. As they entered, two men not in uniform pushed their way inside behind them. Khalil’s visa had been revoked, they told him. They were there to deport him, and if Khalil’s eight-months-pregnant wife, who is an American citizen, didn’t shut up and go into their apartment, they would arrest her too. When Khalil demanded a warrant, one of the men showed Khalil a picture of a document on his phone, which is not how warrants work.

Khalil, who is Palestinian, was one of the leaders of Columbia University’s encampment protest against the genocide in Gaza last year. He represented the protest in negotiations with the university. He also recently obtained his green card, a fact that seemed to catch the men—plainclothes Department of Homeland Security officers, it turns out—off guard. One of them made a phone call, then hung up and told Khalil that his green card was revoked as well. By this time, Khalil had his lawyer on the phone. She echoed her client’s demand for an actual warrant, on paper, in accordance with the law. The officers hung up on her. They abducted Khalil, took him to an ICE detention center in New York City, then moved him to a different, undisclosed facility. For all of Sunday, Khalil’s wife and lawyer could not locate him; he had effectively been disappeared. Only yesterday did they finally discover his whereabouts: a privately owned ICE detention center flagged by human rights organization for severe medical neglect and both physical and sexual assault.

When Zeteo, which helped break the story, reached out to the DHS for comment, the agency could have declined to say anything. It could have told a self-serving lie—claimed Khalil is a dangerous criminal (he has not been charged with any type of crime) or said its action was routine. Instead, DHS referred Zeteo to the White House. The message could not have been clearer: Trump ordered this arrest. Khalil’s detention is exactly what it looks like.

Mahmoud Khalil is the first person Trump’s administration has disappeared for political reasons. The choice of victim is extremely strategic. Defending Khalil invokes political costs they don’t believe either Columbia University or the Democrats are willing to incur. So far, they are correct.

On March 7, the day before Khalil’s arrest, the administration pulled $400 million in grant funding to Columbia because of the university’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,” by which it means any opposition to Israel. As you read Columbia’s response to the funding pull, as written by interim president Katrina Armstrong, please keep in mind that this university has highly renowned history and political science departments and consistently ranks among the top 10 colleges in the US:

I want to assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns. To that end, Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combatting antisemitism on our campus. This is our number one priority.

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I speak fluent Invertebrate, so allow me to translate: “We will happily grovel and abase ourselves in hopes that you will return our money and be nice to us. We won’t defend ourselves when you kick us; we will simply apologize louder. Please don’t kick us anymore.”

Sure enough, in the aftermath of one of the most blatant Fourth Amendment violations I’ve ever seen, Columbia University put out a milquetoast statement that has to be seen to be believed:

There have been reports of ICE in the streets around campus. Columbia has and will continue to follow the law. We want to again communicate to our campus community that we have a protocol in place, which includes phone numbers to call in case you are approached on or off campus.

Yes, if only Khalil had followed protocol and called the campus phone number. I’m sure the campus police would have sorted the situation straightaway. I’m sure DHS wouldn’t have hung up on the college dispatcher the way they hung up on the actual goddamn attorney.

But the statement gets worse:

Consistent with this protocol, and consistent with our longstanding practice and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including residential University buildings.

Columbia is committed to complying with all legal obligations and supporting our student body and campus community. We are also committed to the legal rights of our students and urge all members of the community to be respectful of those rights.

That’s it—that’s the entire statement. No mention of Khalil’s name, no condemnation of the arrest. Just “hey, guys, here’s a number you can call if men try to throw you in a van. Let’s all try to be polite.” Columbia University’s administration deserves to be eaten by bears feet-first, and I hope their institution is remembered forever for throating the boot as America fell.

The Democrats, in a move that should surprise no one at this point, have made no moves at all. Did anyone think they would, for someone like Khalil? That party is so allergic to even the appearance of support for the Palestinian people that the Harris campaign ordered volunteers to mark fundraising feedback that involved Gaza as “no response.” In fact, they refused to even categorize opposition to genocide “out of fear that [the] category would be leaked.”

Zohran Mamdani, Brad Lander, and a number of the other candidates for New York City mayor (but, notably, not Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams) strongly denounced Khalil’s unconstitutional detention immediately, as did Rashida Tlaib. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez followed suit Monday morning. It took house minority leader Hakeem Jeffries over 48 hours to weigh in, at which point he demanded evidence for Khalil’s affiliation with Hamas and called the arrest “wildly inconsistent with the United States Constitution.” The Senate Judiciary Committee called the arrest “actual cancel culture,” which seems like an understatement. At time of publication, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has still issued no comment.

The Trump administration’s decision to proudly own the disappearance suggests it is actively gauging how the American people will react to having their constitutional rights put through a shredder. It must be incredibly pleased.

Khalil is Trump’s first political disappearance, but he’s unlikely to be the last. You’ve heard the damn poem; we’ve all heard the damn poem, a million times probably. To paraphrase:

First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out, because it would have made me look like a socialist sympathizer.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out, because what if the businesses stopped giving me money?

Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out, because the German middle class is clearly sick of that woke nonsense and I can’t alienate them before parliamentary elections.

Then they came for me—and I said, if the socialists and trade unionists and Jewish people had just voted for us in 1933 we wouldn’t be in this mess (🌊🌊🌊 #resist, etc).

ICE can deport green-card holders for engaging in and/or inciting terrorism, and the Trump administration is already using that excuse to justify Khalil’s detention. Late Sunday night, after initially directing requests for comment to the White House, DHS finally gave a statement to The Guardian: The agency revoked Khalil’s green card in the name of following Donald Trump’s executive order “prohibiting antisemitism.” Marco Rubio weighed in on Twitter: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”

“Terrorist” has always been a remarkably elastic word. For over two decades now, America has used that label to justify atrocities—usually against people who are brown, Muslim, and/or from a country we despise. The Trump administration’s use of terrorism to justify the blatantly illegal disappearance of a peaceful activist—whose ties to Hamas appear to consist exclusively of opposition to ethnic cleansing—stretches the term even further. By all appearances, they’re just getting started.

In January, the House reintroduced a bill to designate “Antifa” as a domestic terror organization. Trump has repeatedly declared his intent to prosecute people released without charges during the 2020 protests. Kash Patel’s FBI recently announced that it would stop monitoring far-right extremism and instead focus on “things like BLM and Antifa.” Patel does not need a bill or even an executive order to make that happen; he can crack down on BLM terrorists all by himself with the FBI and the ATF, plus assistance from Kristi “puppy-killer” Noem’s DHS as needed.

As an alleged member of the “Antifa Press,” I can authoritatively tell you that the word means even less than “terrorist” does. Antifa could be a kid in the black bloc throwing a Molotov cocktail at cops. It could be an activist at a protest that gets declared a riot. It could be someone engaged in a peaceful, permitted march, or contributing to someone’s legal defense fund, or someone who posts “Black Lives Matter” on Instagram. Remember: Supporting and inciting terrorism is a crime too.

Antifa could be people speaking out at public meetings—the Republicans are already blaming the massive backlash they’re facing on Soros-paid activists. Anyone who opposes this regime could be antifa—and when you take into account the actual meaning of that portmanteau, they’re not entirely wrong.

It does not matter whether you think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. It is, but that’s not the point. If we stand by while the DHS executes a warrantless arrest of a green-card holder for his political beliefs and sends him to an undisclosed detention facility, we give the Trump administration a permission slip to disappear anyone who opposes them.

The people with institutional power could take a stand and come out swinging. The Democrats could use procedural rules to completely shut down the government. Columbia and other universities could refuse to allow ICE agents on campus; professors could refuse to teach until the administration takes action. Everyone involved could demand answers and due process, make this disappearance front-page news for as long as it needs to be. The people with institutional power are doing none of these things so far, and if their inaction continues it will herald the end of unalienable rights in America.

Those of us outside the halls of power have far fewer options. We can contact our representatives and demand that they condemn Khalil’s detention and take some of those actions I just listed. We can e-mail Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong and demand that the school condemn Khalil’s detention ([email protected], [email protected]). Action Network has a great tool that can help you e-mail your representatives and Columbia’s administrators all at the same time. The ACLU has Know Your Rights training twice a month that can teach you how to keep your community safer if the regime keeps pretending to care about the law sometimes.

And we can keep talking about it, posting about it, yelling about it, so this story doesn’t just become another blip in our manic, March 1 news cycle—and Khalil is not forgotten.