The morning of March 8, Mahmoud Khalil was detained at his apartment in New York City. Khalil is a 30-year-old Algerian citizen. He was born in Syria and is of Palestinian descent.
He came to this country on a student visa in 2022, married an American citizen in 2023, became a green card holder in 2024, and finished his graduate studies at Columbia University in December 2024.
Mahmoud was also the spokesman and negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a group that says it is “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” and which played an active role in the rioting that took over Columbia buildings last spring.
He has not been charged with any crimes—at least not so far. But the White House wants to deport him on the grounds that he poses a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio went as far as to post on X: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Many of us believe that Khalil’s ideology is abhorrent. He enjoyed the United States’ educational system—attending one of our most prestigious universities—while advocating for America’s destruction and for a group that seeks the genocide of the Jewish people.
At the same time, the case for his deportation is not clear-cut. Here’s the divide:
Some say this is an immigration case. As Free Press contributing editor Abigail Shrier has put it: “This is an immigration, not a free speech case. It’s about whether the U.S. can set reasonable conditions on aliens for entry and residence.” But others say this is, in fact, a free speech case that cuts to the heart of our most cherished values.
To figure all this out, we’re hosting three of the smartest legal minds we know. Eugene Volokh is an expert on the Bill of Rights who is currently a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He’s also a contributor to Reason magazine, where he runs his own blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder is a practicing lawyer and the director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center. Just yesterday, he filed a lawsuit in the District Court for the Southern District of New York against Khalil and several others for material support for terror. Jed Rubenfeld is a Free Press columnist and a professor of constitutional law at Yale Law School.
This case is one we have written about extensively in The Free Press—and one that we are actively debating in our newsroom. So we were thrilled to be able to bring together some of the smartest people on this complicated issue.
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