Democrats show largely muted response to arrest of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil
When Michigan Congresswoman and Palestinian native Rashida Tlaib shared a letter to her social media account on Tuesday demanding that immigration authorities free Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil - a man never charged with a crime - it only contained 14 signatures.
For perspective, there are 220 Democrats in the House of Representatives, all of whom have been unabashedly vocal in their criticism of the Trump administration’s actions on a near-daily basis.
There are 45 Democrats in the Senate.
But only a select number of self-styled progressives including Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Summer Lee, and Al Green - the man thrown out of President Donald Trump's State of the Union speech last week - were willing to add their names to language that leaves no room for interpretation.
“We are horrified by the recent illegal abduction and now indefinite detention of Mahmoud Khalil - a US legal permanent resident - by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, and we unequivocally demand his immediate release from DHS custody,” the letter said.
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“Khalil's arrest is an act of anti-Palestinian racism intended to silence the Palestine solidarity movement in this country,” it read. “He is a political prisoner.”
Among those notably absent from the document was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, otherwise known as AOC. She grew her brand as a member of the so-called "Squad" of progressive women in the House of Representatives but came under fire throughout Israel’s war on Gaza as she adopted what many saw as a more establishment-friendly tone within the Democratic Party.
After a social media firestorm, AOC’s chief of staff said she would have definitely signed the letter if it wasn’t too late, and that she was simply “waiting on a detail before signing”.
“Unfortunately, the letter was closed before that detail was confirmed,” he said on X.
“There are potentially logistical reasons for that, or just internal congressional process reasons for that,” one Democratic strategist working on Palestinian advocacy in Congress told Middle East Eye.
“I do think more lawmakers have spoken out than signed that letter.”
By the end of the day, it was revealed that AOC had signed a similar letter along with fellow New York Democrats serving at the local level.
Columbia University is located in New York City.
New York lawmakers
Back in Washington, Congressman Jerry Nadler, also representing the state of New York, said he is “monitoring the situation” but that “the warrantless arrest of any legal permanent resident seemingly solely over their speech is a chilling, McCarthyesque action”.
Last year, he famously led the opposition against a bill that could conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. He is a graduate of Columbia University.
“If the Trump White House were serious about rooting out antisemitism in America, they should start with their own Administration,” he wrote on X.
In the upper chamber, the most senior Democrat from New York, Senator Chuck Schumer, urged due process but his statement on X included a definitive preamble: “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,” Schumer wrote.
'Most are also calling on the government to be open and transparent'
- Kevin Rachlin, The Nexus Project
“[Khalil] may well be in violation of various campus rules regarding how the protests were conducted last year,” he added. “I have encouraged [Columbia] to be much more robust in how they combat antisemitism.”
Students who participated in the 2024 university encampments across the country maintain they are against Israel’s policies and its occupation of Palestine, and that they are not antisemitic.
Schumer is a longtime supporter of Israel and is also the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker in the US.
“If the administration cannot prove [Khalil] 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,” he concluded.
Kevin Rachlin, the Washington director at The Nexus Project, which works to “oppose and counter efforts to exploit false accusations of antisemitism for political gain”, told MEE that the Democratic response has thus far been “measured and correct”.
“The vast majority I’ve seen, including Schumer and Nadler, have underscored the right to due process for a permanent resident and that speech is not grounds for deportation,” he said. “Most are also calling on the government to be open and transparent.”
He added that should the government actually deport someone whose opinions conflict with its own foreign policy, then that is a “scary and dangerous move and an omen for things to come”.
‘This practice should cross the line for you’
One of the responses to Khalil’s arrest that received particular praise was that of Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
In a three-minute video posted to X, he makes the case for why all Americans should be concerned.
“[Khalil] opposed Israel's military operation in Gaza. He has deep animus toward Israel's policies and the US support for those policies. He helped organise the protests over Gaza at his university last year. You can disagree with his views,” Murphy said.
“He's in jail because of his political speech,” he added. “Trump chose to begin by disappearing a Palestinian immigrant, hoping that his place of birth and his immigrant status would just cause people to look the other way.”
“Even if you're a hardened Trump supporter, this practice should cross the line for you.”
Murphy’s response is “surprising in the sense that we are seeing members of Congress… who have not been the most vocal [about] criticising US-Israeli policy and Israeli human rights violations, speak up on this,” the Democratic strategist, whose name has been withheld to speak more frankly to MEE, said.
There’s also Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, a state with one of the largest concentrations of Palestinians in the country. Durbin’s former deputy chief of staff, Reema Dodin, later became the highest-ranking Palestinian to work in the Biden administration.
Just hours after Khalil was arrested, posting from his Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee account, Durbin simply wrote, “Free Mahmoud Khalil”.
“I credit everyone who's advocated over the last 16 months, everyone who's protested, everyone who's called their members of Congress, anyone who's made social media posts. Public opinion has rapidly shifted on this issue,” the Democratic strategist told MEE.
“The Democratic Party hasn't caught up to that. But this is the first maybe real instance… that we've seen, of the signs that it is starting to catch up.”
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