What the detention of Mahmoud Khalil reveals about free speech in the Trump era

The Trump White House is using Department of Homeland Security intelligence to identify pro-Palestinian college protesters. Courts have ruled that campus protests are protected by the First Amendment.

But as the Trump administration seeks to punish speech it does not like, whose First Amendment rights are next?

Irie Sentner, White House reporter for POLITICO and co-author of West Wing Playbook. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Columbia University’s independent student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator. He was a student last year at Columbia University and covered the campus protests.

David Cole, professor in law and public policy at Georgetown University. Former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Matthew Hockenos, professor of modern European history at Skidmore College. Author of "Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis."

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: On March 8th, ICE agents were waiting in the foyer of a Columbia University student housing complex. They were waiting for Mahmoud Khalil and his wife to return from dinner. When they did, ICE agents arrested Khalil on the spot and have been holding him in a Louisiana detention facility ever since.

Mahmoud Khalil is a green card holder. He is a legal permanent resident of the United States. He was also one of the leaders of the student pro-Palestinian protests that paralyzed Columbia University last year. Now, most protests are a protective form of speech in the United States. The Trump administration arrested Khalil for what it says are his quote anti-Semitic and quote anti American actions.

They seek to deport him. And to do, the White House is invoking a little used clause in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. For those of you who follow immigration issues closely, this is not the 1965 Immigration Act that effectively abolished immigration quotas in the United States. This is the much earlier 1952 Act, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act.

It was passed amid anti-communist fervor in the early Cold War. And it includes a subsection that provides for the deportation of immigrants whose quote, criminal activity, endangers public safety, Or national security end quote. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on CBS's Face the Nation just yesterday and host Margaret Brennan pressed Rubio to provide evidence that Mahmoud Khalil's protest activities threatened U.S. national security.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But is there any evidence of a link to terrorism or is it just his point of view?

MARCO RUBIO: Yeah, they take over. Do you not? You should watch the news. These guys take over entire buildings, vandalize colleges, they shut down colleges.

BRENNAN: We covered it intensely. I'm asking for specific reasons for the revocation of his visa. Was there any evidence of material support for terrorism?

(CROSSTALK)

RUBIO: Well, this specific individual was the spokesperson, was the negotiator – negotiating on behalf of people that took over a campus, that vandalized buildings. Negotiating over what? That’s a crime in and of itself, that they’re involved in being the negotiator or the spokesperson, this, that, the other. We don’t want – we don’t need these people in our country. We never should have allowed them in the first place.

CHAKRABARTI: There is no doubt that the Columbia student protests last year were highly controversial, disruptive, and terrifying to the university's Jewish students. But does that make them illegal?

Does that make Khalil's actions akin to supporting terrorism? Does that make the protest a threat to the United States? Or, is the Trump administration weaponizing immigration law to crush speech and beliefs it simply does not like? We're going to start today with someone who witnessed the protests firsthand.

Irie Sentner is a White House reporter for Politico now, but previously he was editor in chief of Columbia University's independent student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, and he was on campus daily last year and reported on the protests. Irie, welcome to On Point.

IRIE SENTNER: Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: So start by reminding us a little bit about how the protests unfolded and how they did actually disrupt campus life.

SENTNER: So pretty much immediately after October 7th, 2023, we saw a lot of protest activity on campus and also a lot of media activity covering those protests. And so basically from the beginning, Columbia became known as the center of the student, pro-Palestinian student movement in the United States.

Then in April we saw an intense escalation. So the same day as the university's then president Minouche Shafik was testifying before Congress about allegations of anti Semitism on campus. A group of students pitched tents on a campus lawn, and called it the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and refused to leave.

And then over the next couple of weeks it just got more and more intense. And launched this movement across the globe where other college campuses also set up their own encampments.

CHAKRABARTI: And they also, did they occupy any buildings on Columbia's campus?

SENTNER: The peak of the protest activity last year was when a group of students that says that it is autonomous from the group of students that had set up the encampment and were negotiating with the university.

A few dozen of them did break into the campus building, Hamilton Hall, which was famous for being occupied in the 1960s, and they were there for just under 24 hours before Columbia's president, working with Mayor Eric Adams, called in hundreds of NYPD officers and in this stunning media spectacle, dragged them out, arrested hundreds more outside of campus.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so those arrests happened in association with the takeover of that building. It did not happen in association with the Gaza Solidarity Camp?

SENTNER: There were two mass arrests, actually, on the first day of the encampment and on the day that the protesters in the buildings were removed.

And that same day that the protesters in the building were removed the encampment was also removed. And students in the encampment were arrested, students in the building were arrested. I think an important point, though, is that the students in the building say that they were separate from the students in the encampment.

CHAKRABARTI: I see. Okay. Now we will talk about Khalil's role in just a second, Irie, but as you were reporting on this day in and day out, what were the students in the protests or in the encampment telling you? Because the Trump administration now, this has been saying that it was a pro Hamas, pro terrorism protest.

SENTNER: So it's a little bit difficult. I will say, messaging wise, the student group, which is called Columbia University Apartheid Divest, or CUAD, says it is an anti-Zionist group, and they say they're not anti-Semitic, in fact, they're led in part by Jewish students. That being said, we have increasingly seen the group endorse some increasingly radical positions.

For example, it called the October 7th massacre in Israel by Hamas an act of legitimate resistance. And my colleagues and I last year actually reported that some of the people in the encampment had engaged with explicitly pro Hamas online content. Again, that being said, their explicit goal for the encampment was to have the university disclose its investments in Israel, divest from Israel, and then also give the students who were protesting amnesty for their actions.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. And what impact also did this have on university operations, but actually specifically because there was a lot of concern obviously amongst Jewish students there.

I think I recall reading that many Jewish students just didn't come back to campus. Correct me if I'm wrong.

SENTNER: So camp is essentially ground to a halt. The gates were locked. Even students who lived on campus, but not necessarily within the central core of the campus couldn't even access their classrooms.

So it was extremely disruptive to the final weeks of the semester. In fact, I graduated, and the university did not have a commencement. So my parents flew in there. There was no commencement. So it was incredibly disruptive. I will say there were many Jewish students who did not feel safe on campus.

Many of them left early. Many of them moved out early. And that was a real concern to university administrators and to lawmakers.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. About Khalil specifically, he's been characterized in the media and by the Trump administration as a lead negotiator on behalf of the campus protesters.

Specifically, according to what you saw, what world did he play?

SENTNER: So that's absolutely an accurate depiction of his role. He was sitting literally across the table from the administration from at least two deans on campus, representing CUAD to the administration. And what's important about that is the fact that he had to be public, right?

Most of the student protesters on campus were wearing head and face coverings. They were not saying their names. Mahmoud Khalil, on the other hand, was he was not wearing anything to obscure his appearance. He was being extremely outspoken. He was teaching, he was talking to the media, and he was very open also about the fact that he was not an American citizen and that he was Palestinian.

CHAKRABARTI: At the time, he did not have his green card. Is that correct? He just had a student visa at the time?

SENTNER: So it's unclear based on legal filings, what we do know is that in May he told Al Jazeera that he was worried about losing his student visa but he did obtain a green card at some point in 2024.

CHAKRABARTI: In 2024, okay. Now, you had a chance to interview him, yes?

SENTNER: I've spoken to him. He also, he literally hosted press conferences. And so anybody who was covering the encampment from the inside at the time would have spoken to him.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. And so in the times that you, did he express any explicitly pro Hamas beliefs or what did he tell you that he wanted?

SENTNER: No, not in my interactions with him. He stayed on message for what the student group wanted, which again was for the university to disclose its investments in Israel, divest from Israel and its planned global center in Tel Aviv, and then also make sure that those student protesters had amnesty for their actions.

I never witnessed any quote unquote pro Hamas language from Khalil or any of the demonstrators at that time, again, it could be argued that it has escalated since then. So again, we saw that they called the October 7th massacre an act of legitimate resistance, but Khalil himself, I never witnessed that.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, now I read there's a little bit more about specific things that were alleged to have happened on Columbia's campus that I'm going to ask you on the other side of this quick break that we're going to take. But before that, you're now one of Politico's reporters at the White House. Do you think thus far that the Trump administration's characterization of Khalil, his beliefs and actions is accurate?

SENTNER: Again, that is unclear. So last week the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that he had distributed flyers with the logo of Hamas on campus. She said that she had the flyer in her possession, but she didn't want to show it. We also saw that exchange over the weekend from Secretary of State Marco Rubio where he declined to give specific evidence.

So right now, it's unclear. They're just saying that he was pro Hamas.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Now, Irie, you had mentioned these flyers that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that she had. She alleges that they were, they're pro Hamas flyers, that Khalil was handing out. I want to just hear a little bit more of what Leavitt told reporters last week.

KAROLINE LEAVITT: And I have those flyers on my desk. They were provided to me by the Department of Homeland Security. I thought about bringing them into this briefing room to share with all of you, but I didn't think it was worth the dignity of this room to bring that pro Hamas propaganda.

But that's what this individual distributed on the campus of Columbia University. And this administration is not going to tolerate individuals having the privilege of studying in our country and then siding with pro terrorist organizations that have killed Americans.

CHAKRABARTI: Irie, have you seen these alleged flyers?

SENTNER: I have seen the flyers. They do have the logo of Hamas on them, and they do use the language that Hamas uses to describe the October 7th massacre. They call it the Al-Aqsa Flood, and they call it an act of resistance.

CHAKRABARTI: And the Hamas symbol being what, for people who don't know?

SENTNER: It's just, it's like the logo of Hamas. I'm not sure how to explain it.

CHAKRABARTI: That's okay. I just wanted to be sure, because I was looking around to see if I could find an online image of the flyers. I don't think I did, because the one that I'm seeing now is an image of one of the Hamas attackers who came in by parachute, but that's not what you're talking about.

SENTNER: No, that's not what I'm talking about.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so these flyers do actually exist. And do we know if Khalil was handing them out?

SENTNER: That is unclear. The White House says he was. I'm not sure if they have any evidence to back that up.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. What do you think the long term impact of these protests, of the way Columbia University handled or mishandled them, has been on the university?

SENTNER: It's been devastating, we saw this month that the White House announced that it was pulling $400 million in federal funding from Columbia over these allegations of anti Semitism. Last week the Department of Justice said that it was considering opening terrorism investigations into Columbia.

And now the White House has given Columbia basically this list of demands that it needs to meet in order to get that $400 million back. And those are pretty staggering. It includes a mask ban, so that no one on campus can wear a mask. Or if they do, they need to display their university ID on their person.

It includes putting an entire academic department, the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies Department, under outside control. And we're also seeing Homeland Security agents actually on campus. Two more students have been deported by Homeland Security since. So it's been, it's really rocked Columbia.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Irie Sentner, currently a White House reporter for Politico and formerly editor in chief of Columbia University student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator. I really thank you so much for joining us. This is critical background for us to continue our analysis about what's happening around the First Amendment and Mahmoud Khalil.

So thank you so very much.

SENTNER: Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Alright, so now let's turn to David Cole. He's a professor of law and public policy at Georgetown University, former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union and a long-term litigator on behalf of civil rights for Americans in many First Amendment cases as well.

Professor Cole, welcome back to On Point.

DAVID COLE: Thanks for having me, Meghna.

CHAKRABARTI: Let's start where Irie left us off. Right now, the Trump administration is saying, Columbia University, in order for you to get this $400 million back in funding, you have to acquiesce to the demands that Irie said DOJ has put in front of them.

Masks, departments under outside control, et cetera, mask bans, I should say. Has an administration ever done this to an American university?

COLE: Absolutely not. It's an unprecedented intrusion on academic freedom. The principle of academic freedom is that universities have the right to decide for themselves how best to govern themselves to ensure that we have free inquiry and free speech and the like.

And here you have politicians basically saying we want to take over a department of the university, and they're doing so without ever having provided any notice of any charges of any specific violation by Columbia, they first canceled $400 million in grants and contracts. Now they've imposed demands on the university, and they've not yet said what specific violation, if any, Columbia engaged in.

CHAKRABARTI: So we're gonna scrutinize the allegations against Mahmoud Khalil in a moment. But to your point, this is much broader than that. Without saying anything specific that Columbia has done, the Trump administration has taken an unprecedented step.

This has never happened as far as in the history of the United States. Look, we're getting into the territory now, Professor Cole, where I'm seeing people who beforehand would not utter this word are uttering it now, that such actions are akin to those taken by fascist governments.

COLE: Look, I think what you see when authoritarian leaders gain power in other democracies is an effort to neutralize.

Any source of potential opposition to the authoritarian regime. And so you see them targeting the media, you see them targeting universities, you see them targeting the non-profit sector, you see them targeting the courts, and the Trump administration has done all of that. It really is unprecedented in this country.

I believe our civil society institutions and our traditions of judicial independence are very strong, but they are truly being tested by this administration.

CHAKRABARTI: Now Professor Cole, I know this may seem awkward for me to ask a prominent First Amendment lawyer to do, but for the sake of intellectual and civic rigor, can you think of any argument, any plausible or acceptable argument that the Trump administration could offer, that says, by virtue of not tamping down on those protests earlier, by virtue of not confiscating those flyers that had the Hamas logo on it, by virtue of not doing more to protect Jewish students on campus, that the university as a whole was effectively siding with a student group that the Trump administration says had pro terrorist sympathies.

And therefore, it is within the purview of the national, of the federal government, to protect us national security by punishing the university.

COLE: Look, drawing the line between free speech and discrimination is hard. It's very hard. And that's why it is important when the government accuses a university that is committed to free speech on behalf of its students, which Columbia is when it accuses it of essentially tolerating discrimination that the government must identify specific instances where Columbia failed to respond.

If you look at the way Columbia responded compared to other universities around the country. They were much more harsh. They arrested many more students. They shut down things much more heavily than many other Universities across the country. This was not, you know, limited to Columbia.

This was across the country students protesting what Israel was doing and sometimes saying things that other students found offensive. But that's part of free speech and to hold Colombia accountable in this way without even giving it notice of what the alleged violations were, without giving it an opportunity to contest those allegations by demonstrating that it responded appropriately.

It is, the administration is violating the very law that it says it's enforcing, Title 6, the Anti-Discrimination Act, which requires that kind of notice, requires a hearing, requires giving Columbia an opportunity to respond. None of that has happened. So I think this is an exploitation of the administration of charges of anti Semitism to target universities because universities, are an important community.

Part of our civil society that will and can push back against the president. They're doing everything they can to neutralize that opposition and using anti Semitism as an excuse.

CHAKRABARTI: But to be clear, according to U.S. law, while anti Semitism, anti-Semitic speech is vile. There's no doubt about that.

Is it illegal?

COLE: No. And there's talk about distributing Hamas flyers. I could go out on the street here in Washington, D.C. right now and distribute Hamas flyers and the government could do nothing to me. I could say that the acts of October 7th were a legitimate act of resistance.

I don't think they were, but I could say that I have a constitutional right to say that under the First Amendment. Remember, the Supreme Court has held the First Amendment protected Nazis to march in Skokie. It protected the Ku Klux Klan's right to burn crosses and call for violence against African Americans. It protected the right of people to burn the American flag.

It, you know, very reprehensible conduct very offensive speech is protected by our first amendment. And Columbia, I think was caught in the very difficult position of trying to balance free speech against discrimination. And I think they actually came down pretty hard on the students.

Many people think they came down too hard on the students, but the notion that they were somehow complicit in anti Semitism is really ludicrous.

CHAKRABARTI: To your point, when White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says that people shouldn't have the privilege of being in the United States if they're siding with quote pro terrorist organizations that have killed Americans.

The same could be said regarding all the pro terrorist organizations like the Klan who definitely killed Americans on U.S. soil during the civil rights era, yes?

SENTNER: Yeah, the same could be said of the January 6th protesters who killed police officers. In our country, we believe in individual culpability, not guilt by association.

And we believe in free speech, not suppressing people because we disagree with what they are saying or because what they say offends somebody else. That's the price of protecting free speech and free speech is absolutely critical to our democratic system.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Cole, I want you to say something again because I can't believe I didn't think of it myself. That protesters, rioters on January 6th, who definitely took over the Capitol, damaged the building, stopped a constitutionally mandated government process in terms of the electoral account certification, wounded police officers, some of them very gravely, led to the deaths of people.

The Trump administration does not see those people as being terrorists. But you would say they are.

COLE: No, I wouldn't say they were terrorists, but I would say he has pardoned people who engage in direct violence against people who are simply trying to maintain law and order. And here he is seeking to deport an individual who has not accused of engaging in any violence whatsoever, but at most, of distributing literature that is constitutionally protected, and the administration doesn't like.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay here is the border czar under the Trump administration, Tom Homan and he was in Albany, New York last week. He took a question from a reporter about Khalil's arrest.

TOM HOMAN: We consider a national security threat, when you're on campus and say, and I hear freedom of speech.

Can you stand a movie theater and yell fire? Can you slander somebody verbally? Free speech has limitations, but when you go to college campus, you incite protesting and locking down and taking over buildings and damaging property and handing out leaflets for Hamas, who is a terrorist organization.

Coming to this country either on a visa or becoming a resident alien is a great privilege. But there are rules associated with that. You might be able to get away with that stuff in the last administration, but you won't under this administration.

CHAKRABARTI: That's Tom Holman, President Trump's border czar.

Professor Cole, the part of the McCarran-Walter Act, the 1952 Immigration Act, that the administration is pointing to, I have it here in front of me. Section 237, subsection (a), subsection (4), (C), (i). And it says a person, in the words of the act, an alien, is rendered deportable when, quote, their presence or activities in the United States, the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe, would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.

First of all, has a prior administration turned to this section of the 52 Act before, in order to deport legal permanent residents in this country?

COLE: Absolutely not. This is an unprecedented use of this provision. This provision has been barely used in the time that it's been on the books.

But it was really designed for situations like when you have a leader of a foreign country who's accused of war crimes, or of a foreign organization that's accused of war crimes, and they're seeking to come into the United States, and it would undermine our foreign policy to admit that person.

It might be seen as our giving them some badge of legitimacy. That's what it was designed to do. It was not designed to be a tool to go out and pick up a single person on a college campus because he was involved in protests. There were protests across this country at hundreds of colleges across the country.

Are they saying that each one of those protests undermined our foreign policy to such an extent that anyone who is not a citizen engaged in those protests can be deported on the say so of the Secretary of State.

CHAKRABARTI: That does seem to be what they're saying. And in fact, they're saying that the Khalil case or how the administration is treating Columbia is a blueprint for further actions they might take.

COLE: Exactly, and it's a total perversion of the purpose of that provision. And again, has never been used before in that way. And to the extent that it is used in that way, it is a direct infringement on the First Amendment rights of non-citizens to speak out in this country.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Cole, let's hear a little bit more of what Secretary of State Marco Rubio says are the justifications for Khalil's arrest.

RUBIO: And if you tell us when you apply for your visa, and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, anti-Semitic activities. I intend to shut down your universities. If you told us all these things when you applied for a visa, we would deny your visa.

I hope we would. If you actually end up doing that, once you're in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it. And if you end up having a green card, not citizenship, but a green card as a result of that visa while you're here and those activities, we're gonna kick you out. It's as simple as that. This is not about free speech.

This is about people that don't have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card, by the way.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Cole, respond to that.

COLE: So the government has made that argument before, that because foreign nationals are here as a privilege, they have no rights.

The Supreme Court has rejected that argument. The Supreme Court has said that the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, except where it specifically limits its rights to citizens, protects all people living in the United States, whether they are here legally or illegally, whether they are a citizen or a foreign national, they are protected.

So the Secretary of State is just wrong, once someone is in the United States, they have the same right to free speech that we all do. The Supreme Court decided in 1978 that corporations have free speech rights. And what it said in so holding was the first amendment doesn't specify what speakers it protects.

It says it protects the right of speech, and it protects it for the interest of all listeners. And therefore, it doesn't matter who the source of the speech is protected, thereby corporations, inanimate entities, have First Amendment rights. If that's true, then certainly that's true with respect to foreign nationals, and in fact, in a case I litigated in the 1980s, a court declared another provision of the McCarran-Walter Act that made it a deportable offense to advocate the doctrines of world communism was unconstitutional for exactly the same reason.

It said if corporations have speech rights because of the rights of all of us to hear their points of view. Then so too do the millions of foreign nationals who live among us. They have the same First Amendment rights. So to go after someone for engaging in free speech on campus and seek to deport him is just as unconstitutional as it would be to seek to prosecute and lock up a U.S. citizen for doing the same thing.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Cole, I did some digging on that section of McCarran-Walter that the Trump administration keeps pointing to. And I found that there are certain, I guess, I don't know if we should call them exemptions or not, but as you said earlier, a politician of another country who's in the United States actually gets immunity from McCarran-Walter, whereas according to the Trump administration, a green card holder would not.

But what it also says is that if the secretary of state determines that someone would, quote, compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest. It's the burden on the Secretary to notify, first of all, specific committee chairs in the United States House of Representatives and the Senate of this decision.

Okay, I don't know if that's actually happened yet with the Trump administration. But secondly, I did dig up a case, or actually an action, taken by the Department of Justice in the late 1990s regarding, let me see if I got to pull up his name right now Mario Ruiz Massieu, who was a Mexican national tied up in some political assassinations in the late 1990s.

And the administration at that time wanted to deport him. He had come into the United States with a whole lot of cash trying to flee Mexico. And what was done in that case is that the Secretary of State essentially said, sent a letter to Congress saying, Yes, we believe that Matthew is effectively a U.S. foreign policy threat, and so therefore under McCarran-Walter, we're going to deport him. The DOJ found that letter, in and of itself, was enough. That they didn't really have a greater burden of proof than that, because, quote, there is no indication that Congress contemplated an immigration judge or even the Attorney General overruling the Secretary of State on a question of foreign policy.

How do you respond to that?

COLE: I think the Secretary of State is by definition, the person who speaks for us with respect to our foreign policy. So it's not easy to second guess the Secretary of State with respect to a determination that something is contrary to our foreign policy.

However, the law does not say whenever the secretary of state says somebody poses a threat to our foreign policy, that person shall be deported. It says whenever the secretary of state has a reasonable basis for concluding, that person poses a threat to our foreign policy. So somebody has to review whether the secretary has indeed a reasonable basis and the way the process works is it goes to an immigration judge.

It goes to an appellate body within the immigration service, and then it goes to the federal courts. And they certainly can review whether there is a reasonable basis, and they would do, I think, with great deference. But this is one of those cases where even if you applied the most deferential standard, it is laughable that an individual on a college campus, one of hundreds of college campuses that had protests against what Israel was doing to Gaza, that His mere presence here poses a threat to our foreign policy.

It is clearly a pretext. It is clearly aimed at his exercise of his speech rights. And then there would be the question, even if you defer to him, as to whether there was a reasonable basis here. Is it constitutional to deport somebody for engaging in pure speech, engaging in activity that is constitutionally protected for every human being and indeed every corporation within the United States. And I think the answer to that is absolutely not. What if the Secretary said after the Supreme Court said you can't lock people up or punish people for burning flags, because that violates the First Amendment. What if the Secretary of State said, I've concluded that burning flags is against our foreign policy and so I'm just going to burn flags.

That would clearly violate the First Amendment in the same way that Texas's attempt to make it a crime to burn an American flag violated the First Amendment. This statute does not override the First Amendment, and at the end of the day they have alleged nothing that Mr. Khalil has done that is not protected by the First Amendment.

CHAKRABARTI: On that point, let's listen to Ramzi Kassem. He's an attorney for Khalil. He was on MSNBC just this weekend, and here's what he said.

RAMZI KASSEM: This is a test case from the government's perspective. It's a test case. They want to see how this goes, because if it works out for them, it'll be the template that they apply to every other issue that they ideologically disagree with.

It's not about pro Palestine speech. You can disagree with what Mr. Khalil believes and still believe that he should have a right to say it and remain in this country as a lawful permanent resident. Believe you me, if they get away with this in Mr. Khalil's case. They will apply this model, they will apply this template to every other issue set that they happen to disagree with.

CHAKRABARTI: How do you respond to that, Professor?

COLE: I think that's absolutely right. That's the danger here. They're asserting a really unlimited authority to have the Secretary of State sign a piece of paper. And deport people for engaging in protected speech. And if they can do it to Mr. Khalil, they can do it to anybody else who is not a citizen whose views they don't like, I think there's going to be a long fight here.

I referenced earlier the case I did in the 80s, that case began in 1987. It was a group of Palestinian college and graduate students who were put into deportation proceedings for advocating for Palestinian self-determination. We ultimately won that case, but it took 20 years to win that case.

But since that case, there have been no efforts to deport people for purely political activity in the United States. Until Mr. Khalil, that is from our case to now, no such efforts. And I think it's partly because we were able to defeat the government and establish that indeed immigrants have the same first amendment rights as citizens, that they have not sought to do, but if they prevail.

Then we no longer have a First Amendment that protects everybody in this country. The millions of people who live here, many of them for basically their entire lives as green card holders, would not be free to engage in speech in the same way that the rest of us are, and we would all lose if that were the case.

CHAKRABARTI: Let's take a step back for a moment with that thought because there has been for years now a poetic quotation, a kind of poem that's once again making the rounds. It's attributed to German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller.

First, they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

CHAKRABARTI: So that's Matthew Hockenos reading First They Came. It's a post World War II poem by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller.

Now Hawkenes is a professor of modern European history at Skidmore College, and he says the poem is one of the most powerful calls to action to protect civil liberties, speech, and the rights of all people. And it remains as such to this day. But Niemöller himself did not always believe in the preservation of the rights the poem calls on people to protect.

Professor Hockenos explains.

HOCKENOS: Scholars of this period have been looking for decades, nearly 75 years, for an original invocation of this quote, and we have not found one. If you go to the Holocaust Museum in D.C., they have a version of the Niemöller quote that does not begin with communists.

They have a version that begins with socialists, so they use the groups socialists, Trade Unionists, Jews, and Niemöller, if you go to the New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston, they start with the Communists, and they have other groups, but they also stick the Catholics in there. And then they end with Niemöller.

CHAKRABARTI: Niemöller was born in 1892 in Germany. In adulthood, he firmly believed in the hate coursing through Germany under Adolf Hitler. Niemöller was an ardent German nationalist. He voted for the Nazis twice, in 1924 and 1933. Niemöller actually had no problem with anti Semitism, but when it came to the Nazi party's meddling in his own religion, that's when the Lutheran pastor drew the line.

HOCKENOS: He did not think that the Nazis should be interfering in the affairs of the church. In particular, he was upset that the Nazis were supporting a group that called themselves the German Christians. And these guys were pretty fanatical Nazis. And the thing that bothered them, that bothered Niemöller about them, was not so much that they were Nazis, but they wanted to fuse Nazism and Christianity.

So they wanted to get rid of the Old Testament. And they wanted to worship a blonde haired, blue eyed, Aryan Jesus.

CHAKRABARTI: Niemöller became a prominent and vocal opponent of Hitler's German Christians. And for that, he was arrested in 1937. He was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. And then finally, Dachau, where the Nazis killed at least 40,000 people.

Niemöller was liberated by Allied troops in 1945.

HOCKENOS: You would think that after spending nearly eight years in Hitler's prisons and concentration camps that this would have transformed Niemöller into a strong opponent and somebody who had realized the errors of his ways of being an ardent German nationalist, but in fact he comes out of the camps more or less the same as when he went in.

Probably not exactly the same, of course, but his politics they may have been less ardently supportive of Nazism, but he remained a German nationalist.

CHAKRABARTI: Martin Niemöller was resentful of the occupying forces, and was not seemingly remorseful about the war.

HOCKENOS: And it took a couple months of convincing by some colleagues from abroad, particularly the Swiss theologian Karl Barth took him aside and talked to him over and over again about the fact that what the world needed Niemöller to do was to step forward and publicly acknowledge German responsibility for all the atrocities that were committed during World War II.

And eventually he came around to realizing that this was an important position to take. Perhaps his conscience was speaking to him, but I think even more so than that, there was a sense that if Germans did not step forward and take responsibility, then the rest of the world was not going to step forward and help rebuild their country, help feed them and help them survive the coming winters, which were very cold.

CHAKRABARTI: That's Professor Matthew Hockenos, professor at Skidmore College and author of Then They Came For Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor who Defied the Nazis.

Professor Cole, I wanted to touch on that because a lot of people are feeling this same sort of slippery slope that's described in the Niemöller poem.

He himself is a fascinating figure. We don't have time to go into more about his alleged reformation later now. Are we on this slippery slope, or do you actually still have the faith that you professed earlier in the rectitude and independence of the courts of the United States?

COLE: So I think we are on a slippery slope and the question is whether we can stop it, and I think that question will be answered by the strength of civil society, the willingness of people to speak up for the Mahmoud Khalil's, the Columbia universities of this world and not stay silent out of fear.

And it will depend on the courts willingness to stand up for the constitution against a president who seems both ignorant of it and totally willing to violate it with no compunction whatsoever. As you said, what we're seeing happening right now regarding Columbia University has never happened before.

Federal government has never come after a private university in that