House Speaker Mike Johnson has joined the attacks on Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestine Columbia University activist detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but can’t name any crimes allegedly committed by Khalil.
At a press conference Tuesday morning, Johnson was directly asked what crimes Khalil committed to warrant his arrest, and gave a meandering answer calling the protest organizer a terrorist and attacking university officials for “refusing to take control” of the campus.
“If you are on a student visa and you’re an American, and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home. We’re gonna arrest your — tail, and we’re gonna send you home where you belong,” Johnson said.
Q: What crime did Mahmoud Khalil commit to warrant his arrest?MIKE JOHNSON: Let me tell you something. I went and faced down the angry mob at Columbia at the height of that stuff … if you are on a student visa and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your… pic.twitter.com/wIS55W9At9
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 11, 2025
There’s just one big problem with that explanation: Khalil doesn’t have a student visa, he has a green card. It’s telling that Johnson couldn’t name a law that was broken, but gave a full-throated defense of ICE’s detention of Khalil and President Trump’s decision to target a legal permanent resident of the United States (with a pregnant, U.S. citizen wife) for deportation. It’s an attack on the First Amendment to the Constitution and the right to free speech.
Only a select few Democrats have come out to condemn Khalil’s detention, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and some members of the House Progressive Caucus. Considering that Trump promises to conduct more arrests and further infringe on a basic American right, with the full support of his fellow Republicans, the entire Democratic Party should be sounding the alarm and pulling out all of the stops.
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