Amy Greer is a lawyer at Dratel & Lewis and a part of the team of attorneys representing Mahmoud Khalil.
"Why Mahmoud?" is one of the first questions I get when people learn that I am part of Mahmoud Khalil's legal team. Many first heard his name on Mar. 8, 2025, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents took him from his Columbia University-owned apartment in New York. But the events leading to his arrest and detention began long before that dreadful day—the context of which matters.
Any lawyer who has defended students in disciplinary proceedings, and every student activist—particularly those at Columbia University—knows firsthand that American campuses have become sites of surveillance and repression over the past two years. Across the country, trustees and administrators have cracked down on students—especially those who have served as our moral conscience in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Some schools have called in law enforcement to violently arrest their students.
The university quickly became an obsession for Congress and federal agencies as ground zero of the now-national protest movement. That focus amplified following President Donald Trump's inauguration. The U.S. government placed the university under a microscope as Columbia-inspired Gaza protests continued to spread across the country. Members of Congress began visiting Columbia's campus—either to support the encampments or to condemn them.
Eventually, Columbia invited law enforcement to support the university's repression, leading police to arrive in riot gear and brutalize students at the encampments. Then, the anti-terrorism task force arrived to invade Hamilton Hall, an academic building, using ladders and flashbangs.
In protest, the students had occupied and renamed the building "Hind's Hall" after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza. The IDF murdered her family while they traveled in their car to a safe location amid the fighting, and after being trapped in the vehicle for hours, Hind suffered the same horrific outcome.
While Congress and federal agencies sought to humiliate and punish Columbia's administrators and students, surveillance on campus intensified. University officials and other third-party actors documented students—photographing and filming them, posting their images online and falsely labeling them with inflammatory labels like "pro-terror," "antisemitic" and other defamatory language. Organizations like Betar USA and Canary Mission curated blacklists of students daring to speak out for Palestinian rights, working to ruin their reputations and their careers before they began.
Starting in the fall of 2023, student protesters increasingly faced relentless harassment online, in person and from doxxing trucks encircling the campus with billboards depicting students' faces and names. The goal was to smear these individuals as "Columbia's leading antisemites," in an aggressive attempt to scare them into silencing their political speech.
As pressure mounted, international students came under particular scrutiny. Canary Mission and Betar USA's social media posts tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming to submit "deportation lists" that included international students' names and addresses.
These were not empty threats.
For students like Mahmoud, this meant real, material danger. The most senior officials in the Trump Administration could target them—not just rhetorically, but through state violence which physically sought their harm via removal from the country. We now know that these organizations aided the Trump Administration in identifying international students for arrest, detention and deportation.
Any lawyer who has defended students in disciplinary proceedings, and every student activist—particularly those at Columbia University—knows firsthand that American campuses have become sites of surveillance and repression over the past two years.
- Amy Greer
This is the context of Mahmoud Khalil's arrest, when he was ripped from his pregnant wife, thrown into ICE custody and detained for 104 days. His only crime was daring to speak out—clearly, powerfully and persuasively—against Israel's genocide of Gaza and the U.S. government and Columbia's complicity in it.
The night of Mar. 8 was not an isolated incident. It was the culmination of a months-long smear campaign—not only against Mahmoud, but against all students speaking out against the genocide and for Palestinian rights and dignity.
It was also a message. Upon his abduction, both Rubio and Trump emphasized that Mahmoud would be the first of many to be detained and deported. Trump, using more racist rhetoric, posted on Truth Social: "Shalom, Mahmoud." Such language is also antisemitic, using Jews as a justification to usher anti-democratic policies that harm minorities.
So, why Mahmoud?
The answer lies in his identity, beliefs and impact: because he is Palestinian; because he is Muslim; because he was a student at Columbia. Most important, however, is that he dared to speak the truth about Palestine, genocide and Western support for it—including Columbia University's complicity.
In his comments, Mahmoud has systematically and effectively dismantled the harmful narratives seeking to redefine the student movement, why it exists, why students are speaking out against genocide and why Palestinian liberation is intertwined with freedom for all. He speaks truth to the people—not just to power—while changing hearts and minds in the process.
For me, that is the answer to the question, "Why Mahmoud?"
Now, Trump, Rubio and DHS seek to remove Mahmoud under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) § 237(a)(4)(C)(i), in direct retaliation for his exercise of protected speech. Rubio claims—based on nothing more than his so-called reasonable knowledge—that Mahmoud's presence in the United States has "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States." On that basis, he argues Mahmoud should be stripped of his green card and forcibly removed from the United States.
During my April 11 remarks, I misspoke when I said that this moment is rare in American history. In fact, today's events are a recurring aspect of that history. What is happening to Mahmoud and students around the country evokes 1950s McCarthyism, when the INA was first enacted.
At the time, this section of the INA was primarily developed to target Jewish citizens and immigrants. The government accused them of being "communists" or "subversives." The law, passed in 1952, enabled sweeping immigration restrictions, including visa revocations and deportations to silence and banish such voices.
As scholar Ellen Schrecker elucidates, McCarthyism operated through a two-stage mechanism. First, government actors—including Congress or the Federal Bureau of Investigation—worked with third-party, private actors to identify targets. Once identified, such individuals would be blacklisted by employers, landlords, universities and other institutions under the premise that they were affiliated with communism.
Today, that mechanism is alive and well.
DHS and ICE play their role while organizations like Canary Mission and institutions like Columbia do the same—and the collaboration appears strong. The INA is again being weaponized, but this time against Palestinians and their allies. The effort targets people who demand freedom, students who dare to speak out against genocide and against people simply for who they are.
As history shows, the government starts with people it assumes no one will defend. But it never ends there. Silence is complicity. It is incumbent on all of us to dissent—loudly, unapologetically and consistently.
And we must dissent—now.
