Palestinian activist and recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil remains in custody in Louisiana, just days after he was arrested in New York. A federal judge granted Khalil more access to his attorneys, the ruling coming after Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered Khalil's green card to be revoked. Khalil has not been charged with anything since ICE immigration officials arrested him from his home on campus, citing his role in pro-Palestinian protests last year at Columbia University. In New York this week, hundreds of protestors have held demonstrations demanding Khalil's release, arguing that his arrest violates free speech. Cecillia Wang is National Legal Director for the American Civil Liberties Union and joins Christiane from San Francisco.
Originally aired on March 12, 2025
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Major support for Amanpour and Company is provided by Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism, the Leila and Mickey Straus Family Charitable Trust, Mark J. Blechner, the Filomen M. D’Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, the Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Charles Rosenblum, Koo and Patricia Yuen, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, and Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers.
Subscribe to the Amanpour and Company channel here: https://bit.ly/2EMIkTJ
Subscribe to our daily newsletter to find out who's on each night: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/newsletter/
For more from Amanpour and Company, including full episodes, click here: https://to.pbs.org/2NBFpjf
This program is made possible by viewers like you. Please support your local PBS station: http://www.pbs.org/donate
Like Amanpour and Company on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2HNx3EF
Follow Amanpour and Company on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2HLpjTI
Follow Amanpour and Company on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3SaTUhk
Watch Amanpour and Company weekdays on PBS (check local listings).
Amanpour and Company features wide-ranging, in-depth conversations with global thought leaders and cultural influencers on the issues and trends impacting the world each day, from politics, business and technology to arts, science and sports. Christiane Amanpour leads the conversation on global and domestic news from London with contributions by prominent journalists Walter Isaacson, Michel Martin, Alicia Menendez and Hari Sreenivasan from the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in New York City.
#amanpourpbs
Originally aired on March 12, 2025
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Major support for Amanpour and Company is provided by Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism, the Leila and Mickey Straus Family Charitable Trust, Mark J. Blechner, the Filomen M. D’Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, the Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Charles Rosenblum, Koo and Patricia Yuen, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, and Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers.
Subscribe to the Amanpour and Company channel here: https://bit.ly/2EMIkTJ
Subscribe to our daily newsletter to find out who's on each night: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/newsletter/
For more from Amanpour and Company, including full episodes, click here: https://to.pbs.org/2NBFpjf
This program is made possible by viewers like you. Please support your local PBS station: http://www.pbs.org/donate
Like Amanpour and Company on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2HNx3EF
Follow Amanpour and Company on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2HLpjTI
Follow Amanpour and Company on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3SaTUhk
Watch Amanpour and Company weekdays on PBS (check local listings).
Amanpour and Company features wide-ranging, in-depth conversations with global thought leaders and cultural influencers on the issues and trends impacting the world each day, from politics, business and technology to arts, science and sports. Christiane Amanpour leads the conversation on global and domestic news from London with contributions by prominent journalists Walter Isaacson, Michel Martin, Alicia Menendez and Hari Sreenivasan from the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in New York City.
#amanpourpbs
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00In court today, the judge was dealing with the emergency motion for Mr. Khalil's legal
00:07team to have more access to him.
00:09As you know, the Trump administration illegally detained and arrested Mr. Khalil, a lawful
00:16permanent resident of the United States and a Columbia Law University student.
00:22They whisked him away from his pregnant wife, his family, and his community in New York
00:26City and transported him to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, initially without permitting
00:35him contact with his wife or his attorneys.
00:38Now, the Trump administration, as you said, admittedly is trying to deport Mr. Khalil
00:45because of his speech and protest in support of the human rights of Palestinians.
00:51The government admits that he has not broken any laws, and instead they're invoking this
00:57obscure immigration law that provides that the secretary of state may designate someone
01:03for deportation if the government has reasonable ground to believe that their presence has
01:08a potentially serious adverse effect on foreign policy for the United States.
01:13OK.
01:14Now, this is completely—yes?
01:15I want to play what Secretary of State Rubio said to exactly your point just earlier today.
01:22He said, this is not about freedom of speech.
01:26It's not about that.
01:27He also said, I have the right to revoke anything, as you said, if it violates our foreign policy
01:33standards, et cetera.
01:35This is what he said, and I'm going to play it.
01:37If you tell us when you apply, hi, I'm trying to get into the United States on a student
01:41visa.
01:42I am a big supporter of Hamas, a murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that
01:46rapes teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that
01:51returns more bodies than live hostages.
01:54If you tell us that you are in favor of a group like this, and if you tell us when you
01:57apply for your visa—and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile
02:02up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, anti-Semitic activities.
02:06I intend to shut down your universities.
02:08If you told us all these things when you applied for a visa, we would deny your visa.
02:11I hope we would.
02:12Right.
02:13So, he's laid all that out.
02:14Of course, if we were to tell him that, then clearly we would not be accepted in the United
02:19States.
02:20But what he's saying is that, it seems to me—I want to know how you as a legal expert
02:25view that—he's essentially suggesting that this all applies to Mahmoud Khalil, and yet
02:30there have been no charges leveled against him to touch any of those accusations.
02:36Am I correct?
02:38You are correct, Christiane.
02:40And here's the problem with what Secretary Rubio and President Trump are saying.
02:45The First Amendment protects everyone in the United States, and the government cannot single
02:51someone out for any kind of punishment, including deportation, simply because of the position
02:57that he's taken in protest and in exercising his rights under the First Amendment.
03:04Is Secretary Rubio simply wrong to try to read that immigration law in a way that is
03:10inconsistent with the fundamentals of American life in the First Amendment?
03:14So, again, he's staying there.
03:17The judge today ruled he has to stay in detention in Louisiana, but that his legal team, which
03:22apparently hadn't had any contact, physical contact, you know, until now, will be able
03:28to have more contact with him.
03:30But the question is, his lawyers obviously deny that he was supporting Hamas.
03:37He is a Palestinian university activist.
03:42He was at these protests, but they deny that he was sending out Hamas pamphlets or supporting
03:50Hamas.
03:51So, again, what is the problem here, and what is the bigger picture?
03:59The basic problem is, number one, the Trump administration is trying to smear Mahmoud
04:04Khalil with a completely baseless charge about what it is that he said.
04:11But more fundamentally, the problem with what the government is trying to do is that regardless
04:17of the truth or falsity of what their charges are on the facts, the First Amendment protects
04:24Mr. Khalil's right and everyone in the United States, all of our rights, to say what we
04:30believe, to protest whatever we like to protest.
04:35And it is completely contrary to the First Amendment and to our basic fundamentals of
04:40American life and American democracy for the government to do this.
04:44In trying to, in detaining and in trying to deport Mahmoud Khalil, what the Trump administration
04:51is doing is not just attacking him and his family.
04:55They're not just attacking immigrants.
04:58They are attacking a fundamental American right.
05:02And I add, Christiane, that this is part of a larger pattern, a very disturbing pattern
05:08of the Trump administration's actions against people he considers to be his political enemies
05:16or disfavored minorities.
05:19Whether Trump is going after transgender youth or immigrants or pursuing his policy objectives,
05:26when he starts to punish people and censor people and try to chill Americans' rights
05:33to speak out against him, he's attacking all of us and our constitutional values.
05:40And this is a very disturbing, large step toward an authoritarian government.
05:46And I think what we will start to see, Americans across the ideological spectrum, from left
05:53to right, regardless of party, regardless of ideology, the Trump administration and
05:59Donald Trump are going way too far here.