Progressives are portraying Mahmoud Khalil, a Hamas supporter who led months of anti-Israel protests, as the premiere sympathetic victim of President Donald Trump’s popular migration policies.
Khalil then enrolled at Columbia University in New York City, began protesting Israel’s counter-offensive less than a week after Hamas launched its bloody and chaotic cross-border October 7 raid. The raiding Hamas gunmen yelled Islamic slogans as they killed roughly 1,000 Jewish civilians, including many young people at an early-morning rave.
On March 8, Khalil was arrested and detained pending deportation. A lawsuit and a judge have temporarily blocked the deportation as Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he has the clear authority to deport unwanted migrants.
The arrest spurred a wide range of left-wing groups to protests, including antisemitic Islamic groups and pro-migration groups. These antisemitic groups have pushed the top Democratic politician — Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — into a defensive crouch just as he was about to publicize his new book about antisemitism.
TheBulwark.com, a site formed by Bill Kristol and other pro-migration opponents of Donald Trump, collected protest quotes from pro-migration groups:
“It’s a dangerous slippery slope they’ve started upon, claiming he’s supporting a foreign terrorist organization without bringing formal charges or demonstrating any formal connection to it,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) told The Bulwark. “What’s to stop them from claiming a legal permanent resident in Texas is somehow helping the cartels without formal charges or any evidence?”
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“His disappearance represents a very alarming escalation of the Trump administration going after people they don’t think belong here, which includes immigrants, while also targeting people who dissent, or if they don’t like how you’re standing up against them, that should raise sirens for everyone across this country,” said Anabel Mendoza, communications director for United We Dream, an immigration organization founded by undocumented youth.
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“I hope this moment illustrates to progressives that they’re not going to be able to run from this issue,” [Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of America’s Voice] said. “Immigration is the tip of the spear when it comes to attacks on our democracy.”
Many Democrat-friendly media sites also painted a very generous picture of Khalil while portraying the opposition to Trump’s deportation of Hamas-boosting Khalil as a heroic fight for free speech. Politico, for example, posted:
Trump’s decision to deport a legal immigrant — and a potentially sympathetic one at that, considering he has a pregnant American wife — is unprecedented and obviously deeply concerning for many supporters of the First Amendment.
But Politico also acknowledged the reality that Khalil’s faction and allies are way out of the mainstream:
At the end of the day, the people leading these [anti-Israel] protests believe the system needs to be completely reset — for many of them, it doesn’t stop with a ceasefire. They see the U.S. as “the belly of the beast,” the beast being colonialism, capitalism and essentially all other forces of oppression. I think we’d see similar activity, and a similar vibe, even if Harris had won the election.
The strength and unity of progressive support for Khalil have even forced the nation’s leading Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to suggest that Khalil the Hamas booster should be allowed to stay in the United States.
President Donald Trump and his deputies say they will deport migrants who “espouse hateful ideology. But Schumer — who is Jewish — suggested on March 11 that Khalil be deported only if he broke criminal laws:
I abhor many of the opinions and policies that Mahmoud Khalil holds and supports, and have made my criticism of the antisemitic actions at Columbia loudly known …
[But] The Trump administration’s DHS [Department of Homeland Security] must articulate any criminal charges or facts that would justify his detention or the initiation of deportation proceedings against him. If the administration cannot prove he has violated any criminal law to justify taking this severe action and is doing it for the opinions he has expressed, then that is wrong, they are violating the First Amendment protections we all enjoy and should drop their wrongheaded action.
On March 17, Schumer canceled his planned publicity tour for his new book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning. Aides said he canceled the tour amid left-wing anger about Schumer’s decision to endorse a budget bill for Trump’s priorities.
But Schumer is also feeling anger from the left over Trump’s aggressive enforcement of the nation’s immigration law, including Kahlil’s planned deportation.
Left-wing antisemitism is “much harder to grapple with than antisemitism on the right,” Schumer wrote in his book, according to an article in Forward.com, which explained, “Because it often comes from political allies and because it can masquerade as human rights activism.”
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