The Guardian in Conversation with Mahmoud Khalil on the Cost of Dissent
Summary
This SXSW 2026 session, hosted by The Guardian's Betsy Reed, features an extended conversation with Mahmoud Khalil — a Palestinian Columbia University graduate and lawful permanent resident — and his attorney Baher Azmy, Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Khalil was the first person detained by ICE in Trump's second term, arrested in March 2025 from the lobby of his New York City apartment building while his wife was eight months pregnant, based solely on his pro-Palestinian student activism and organizing at Columbia University. The session opens with Khalil recounting his arrest in vivid detail: agents refused to show a warrant, falsely accused him of having a student visa when he held a green card, and blocked access to his attorney. Within 36 hours he was transferred from New York to New Jersey to Texas to Louisiana — and it was only when he overheard an officer reporting that "the White House is requesting an update" that he understood this was no misunderstanding.
Baher Azmy provides the legal framework: Secretary of State Rubio invoked an obscure immigration provision allowing deportation if a person's presence creates an "adverse foreign policy consequence," conflating Khalil's advocacy for Palestinian human rights with pro-Hamas activity — a designation rooted in what Azmy calls a deliberate, coordinated plan. He traces the origins to Project Esther, a Heritage Foundation blueprint developed in collaboration with anti-Palestinian groups Canary Mission and Betar and senior Trump aide Steven Miller, which explicitly targeted non-citizen Palestinian student activists for arrest and deportation using weaponized immigration law. Azmy emphasizes there is no legal precedent for this type of prosecution and that for 80 years the U.S. State Department itself defined such detention — imprisoning people for dissent from state policy — as arbitrary detention and political imprisonment, the very practices the U.S. has historically condemned in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.
Khalil describes the 104 days he spent in ICE detention at a facility in Jena, Louisiana — a for-profit facility where over 70 people shared one room with lights never turned off. He witnessed fellow detainees, many Spanish-speaking and confused about what they had signed, deported without any opportunity to present their case before a judge. He wrote op-eds from detention for The Guardian, centering Palestine rather than himself, because he believed he was being used as a distraction from what he calls the actual story: the ongoing killing of Palestinians in Gaza. His son Dean was born while he was detained.
Azmy walks through the current legal posture: federal courts have largely sided with Khalil on the constitutional merits, with one federal judge calling the immigration court proceedings a "show trial." However, a disappointing 2-1 appellate court ruling on a narrow jurisdictional question suggested that constitutional courts may lack jurisdiction and that all challenges must go through the executive branch's own immigration courts — what Azmy calls "the president's courts." They are pursuing en banc review of that decision. Both Khalil and Azmy warn this case is a test case: if the government wins, all immigrants — including lawful permanent residents — could be held in ICE detention indefinitely before accessing a constitutional court. Khalil names the pattern explicitly: "They started with Palestinians, then went after Somalis, Latinos, Venezuelans. Palestine is only a Trojan horse."
The conversation covers the weaponization of anti-semitism accusations, with Khalil unequivocally condemning anti-semitism while rejecting bad-faith litmus tests — including a CNN moment where he declined to condemn Hamas on demand, explaining it was a political trap rather than a genuine inquiry into his views. Both speakers describe Jewish students and organizations as integral to the Palestinian solidarity movement, with Azmy citing a Jewish Columbia student's affidavit that read: "Mahmoud Khalil did more to protect me from anti-semitism on campus than Columbia University ever did." The session closes with Khalil offering a cross-movement solidarity framework and a pointed critique of both parties — arguing that status quo Democrats, not just Trump, bear responsibility for the conditions that enabled his detention, and that continued complicity with Israeli policy while claiming to support free speech is a form of gaslighting. Azmy closes with a stark warning: "The courts will not save us. The only answer is to organize, organize, organize."
Key Takeaways
- •Mahmoud Khalil was the first person detained by ICE in Trump's second term, arrested solely for constitutionally protected pro-Palestinian speech and campus organizing — not any crime — marking an unprecedented use of immigration law to punish political dissent.
- •Secretary Rubio invoked an obscure 'adverse foreign policy consequence' provision of immigration law as the legal basis for Khalil's detention, deliberately conflating advocacy for Palestinian human rights with support for Hamas.
- •The arrest was part of a coordinated plan called Project Esther, developed by the Heritage Foundation with anti-Palestinian groups Canary Mission and Betar alongside Steven Miller, which explicitly targeted non-citizen Palestinian student activists for deportation using weaponized immigration law.
- •For 80 years, the U.S. State Department's own policy defined imprisoning people for political dissent as 'arbitrary detention' and called such individuals 'political prisoners' — the same practice the U.S. has historically condemned in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.
- •Khalil was moved from New York to New Jersey to Texas to Louisiana within 36 hours of his arrest, denied access to his lawyers and wife, and held for 104 days in a for-profit detention facility where over 70 people shared one room with lights never turned off.
- •A key appellate court ruling (2-1) ruled that constitutional courts may lack jurisdiction to review these cases — requiring all challenges to go through the executive branch's own immigration courts, which Azmy describes as 'the president's courts' that function as rubber stamps.
- •If the government prevails in Khalil's case, it would set a precedent allowing all immigrants — including lawful permanent residents with U.S. citizen spouses and children — to be held indefinitely in ICE detention before accessing a constitutional court.
- •Khalil describes the Palestinian solidarity movement as explicitly non-violent, inclusive of Jewish students and organizations, and rooted in international human rights principles — and calls the Hamas-sympathizer label a racist dog whistle used to silence Arab and Palestinian voices without engaging the substance of their advocacy.
Transcript
[applause] [applause and cheering] [applause] Hi everyone. Thank you so much for coming out today. Um, and I just want to welcome you to this really important conversation with Mahmood um, who is a Palestinian graduate of the school of international and public affairs at Columbia University and his attorney Bahara Azmi. He's a legal director of the center for constitutional rights which is at the forefront of a lot of the battles u to protect American civil liberties. Uh today we're going to tal...
