WHO IS MAHMOUD KHALIL AND SHOULD YOU CARE?
1. Mahmoud Khalil is not an illegal alien, not a terrorist. He is a Columbia graduate student, a legal U.S. resident, and a husband whose eight-months-pregnant wife has no idea where he is.
2. The Department of Homeland Security took him without warning, without charges, without a trial, just gone, vanished into the system like a political dissident in an authoritarian state.
3. This isn’t about national security; it’s about silencing dissent, about making an example of a Palestinian student who dared to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
4. If the First Amendment only applies to those with the “right” opinions, then it is no longer a right. it is a privilege granted at the whim of the powerful.
5. Today, they revoke a green card and erase a man’s existence for his speech. tomorrow, it could be you, your neighbour, your child.
6. When a government disappears, a legal immigrant for political expression, it is not democracy. It is tyranny, and it will not stop here.
7. Protest against America in America, and you’re protected; protest against Israel in America, and you’re deported. That’s the new reality.
8. This is the kind of oppression the U.S. condemns in other nations, yet here it happens in broad daylight, with barely a whisper from those in power.
9. If we stay silent, we are complicit because silence is what allows repression to spread, to normalize, to become the new American way.
10. Mahmoud Khalil’s disappearance is not just his fight; it’s a warning, a test, a moment to choose whether we accept this or resist before it’s too late.
Mike