Trump’s government hasn’t won its case against Mahmoud Khalil—yet

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Amy Greer:

When the line starts moving and inching creeping forward, and we all stay silent because it’s like, that’s not our people, or that’s not my issue, or that’s not my concern. The line creeps so that when it is your turn, when it is your issue, when it is your community, that line’s already moved and now your battle is so much harder.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. Now we are all too well aware of the rest of Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student who’s been an activist against the war in Palestine and the oppression of his fellow Palestinians. He was swept up in Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists, and on March the eighth, he was arrested by ice in the lobby of his apartment building in New York in front of his pregnant wife. They said he violated his visa, but he’s not a visa holder. He’s a lawful permanent US resident. So today we’re joined by his attorney Amy Greer, who’s with the firm Lyn Lewis. She’s one of the lead attorneys in the First Amendment suit against Columbia University, and she’s a noted attorney fighting for human justice issues. So Amy, welcome. It’s good to have you with us. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Amy Greer:

Yes, thank you for having me. I’m always happy to speak to my fellow Baltimoreans.

Marc Steiner:

You are a baltimorean,

Amy Greer:

But don’t tell.

Marc Steiner:

I won’t. No, just kidding. I’ve been following this case since the beginning because it always felt absolutely horrendous. What was going on? Take a step backwards for just a minute and just talk about Mahmoud Khalil and who he is and why do you think he was targeted?

Amy Greer:

Sure. Mahmoud is a Palestinian who was raised in a refugee camp in Syria because his grandparents were forcibly removed from Tiberius where they had lived for many generations. And he came to the United States to study when he arrived at the university in 2022, he was really loving his studies and enjoying his time there. But once October 7th, 2023 occurred, and even before that time, he understood along with numerous other Columbia students that the university was supporting Israeli militarism against Palestinians through a number of different ways, research, financing, investments, who the board members were and where their board memberships were with weapons manufacturers, et cetera, and the students organized. And Columbia has a long history of student organizing from the 1960s onward, and it also has a long history of organizing for Palestinian liberation, freedom and dignity through boycott and divestment and sanctioned support. And Mahmoud joined that long tradition at Columbia of trying to hold the institution to account for its role in the unfolding genocide. And because he is such an effective communicator, you probably have seen him soft-spoken,

He’s incredibly well-spoken. He puts ideas together in ways that are moving to people that get people to sit up and pay attention. And he was part of a very effective student movement that involved hundreds of organizers who were creative in their approaches. And I think why Mahmoud specifically was targeted is because of his effectiveness, because of his ability to attract people who might consider themselves more moderate because his messaging was so clear, his approach had such moral clarity and ethical clarity that I think this administration frankly is frightened of him and his ability to sway opinion. And as his media presence and his popularity grew and grew, this administration chose him as its target in the hopes that it would frighten the movement, frighten the rest of us from speaking frightened people who are newcomers to the United States or who don’t hold citizenship into silence.

And I think these are all the various interplay that brought this to bear. And then the last component that I just don’t want to neglect because I think this is really important when thinking about how authoritarianism works, is the engagement of invested third parties in the suppression of speech and in punishing people and the students at Columbia, including Mahmoud, but many other students as well, were also under a profound third party surveillance mechanism. So not just Columbia surveilling the students, but also groups like Bayar, groups like Canary Mission and other related groups had people on campus with cameras. They were taking videos in classrooms, videos at protests, videos of peaceful teach-ins that were happening. And they were doxing these students, they were putting their addresses and faces online, labeling them as antisemites even though some of them themselves were Jewish individuals. And also where the idea is freedom for all, not at the suppression of one group over another. And so I do think that there’s that third party component that as we’re seeing in the broader scale play out is really effective. You have groups like Geo Group and others who are willing to build these massive immigration facilities. So these third party complicity and profiting is something else that I think came to bear on Mahmoud as well that brought him even more into the government line of sight to cause him to be the first one to be detained.

Marc Steiner:

And what you were describing is people are listening to us. Is that when you talk about Betar and the other group, these are Zs organizations in the country.

Amy Greer:

Yes, exactly. They are. And they operate all over the place, but these people were local to New York who were taking these videos and things like that.

Marc Steiner:

So just where he is now, tell me what’s happening at this moment, where he is and what the battle is you’re in the middle of at the moment for him, for Mahmoud.

Amy Greer:

So I just want to say for all the listeners, because I know this week’s news scared a lot of people. Mahmoud is safe and he is at home with his family. So that’s the first and foremost thing.

I just spoke to him last night and he’s in good spirits. So at this moment, he is safe and home or safe with his family, I should say. So where we are now, Mahmoud is facing in the cases that are known more broadly in the public, he’s facing a two-headed monster. The administration brought immigration allegations against Mahmoud, and so he’s proceeding through an administrative immigration proceeding that has found him removable and is seeking to deport him, have him deported. Ultimately, we challenged that process and the Rubio determination from Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, that declared that his presence in the United States created potentially adverse consequences to American foreign policy. We’ve challenged that in the federal district court, which are the constitutional Article three courts. So both of these things were temporarily paused because the government appealed a decision made by the Federal District Court in Mahmoud’s case, where that court decided that it had the authority to hear our challenges of what’s happening to Mahmoud. When the government said, we disagree with that, they brought it up to the Third Circuit Court of appeals. When that happened, everything stopped, the immigration case stopped, and the Federal District Court case stopped. While the appellate court considered all of the arguments. Arguments happened in October of 2025, but last week the third Circuit released an opinion and it was a two to one opinion, meaning a three judge panel.

Two of the judges found that the district of New Jersey made the wrong decision and that it in fact did not have authority to hear our arguments. And we can talk about what those arguments are if you’d like. But the third Circuit decided that the district court did not have the authority to hear those arguments. And one of those judges disagreed and said, actually, this is exactly where these arguments should take place because we have constitutional claims and this is exactly where it should happen. So now everything is moving forward again where we now have to go back to the third circuit and say, we want to hear what all 12 judges think. We want to hear the full panel and whether they agree with what these three judges decided. And it’s a way to potentially challenge that decision because they could potentially, as a majority group could decide that that dissenting the opinion that single judge’s dissenting opinion is the correct one. And that ultimately where the two judges landed is incorrect. So now things are moving again in the two headed direction, the immigration case is moving, and we will be appealing that third circuit decision.

Marc Steiner:

It seems to me that Mahmoud and his family are safe at the moment. So just on a personal note, must be all consuming. What else can you do?

Amy Greer:

Yeah, I mean, it’s funny you said that because my eye just started twitching, right? When you No, I mean I think it is all consuming in the sense that even when I do have other clients and I work on other cases and I care very much about those clients and those cases,

Marc Steiner:

But

Amy Greer:

Certainly in the back of my mind all the time, I am holding Mahmoud and Nur and their son Dean in my thoughts all the time. Of course,

Marc Steiner:

It’s also this particular case and I’ve been just reading everything that’s come out about it that I can is significant politically in that if for whatever reason I don’t want this to happen, but if he should lose the case, this opens the floodgates for Trump and Rubio and the administration to have their will with people who they do not agree with American policy and are not citizens of this country.

Amy Greer:

Yeah, I mean I think that there’s so many layers to this. Your analysis I think is right, and that should concern all of us. I want to take it one step further.

Marc Steiner:

Sure.

Amy Greer:

In the district court of Massachusetts, there was just a really important case, the American Association of University Professors versus Rubio. The trial happened in July and the decision came out in September, and now the judgment just landed yesterday. And in those proceedings, as the judge is hearing evidence from this federal government, from members of the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, he came to the determination that this administration is conspiring to chill First Amendment speech and protected speech rights in particular of non-citizens, but basically of a viewpoint as a whole, trying anybody speaking out for Palestinian liberation, Palestinian right to dignity in life and all of these things that that viewpoint should be suppressed. And what this judge pointed out in the hearing the other day on the remedies hearing was that this administration is afraid of a robust First Amendment, afraid of having robust as a former Supreme Court judge called it a robust marketplace of ideas where we engage in dissent and debate in this nation.

And so I think one of the things that’s really critical about the case, and I really want to anchor into this, this is about newcomers to the United States students, international students holding visas, lawful permanent residents, and potentially even naturalized citizens. No question. These people are vulnerable. And what this administration is doing is chilling and seeking to create fear and saying, if you speak out against us or against Israel or any of that, you’re going to get booted out of here. And also, I think for all of those who look like me potentially, who think that this doesn’t apply to us and that we should not be expending our political and social capital right now or our financial capital, that is so dangerous. And I just want to invite your listeners to recognize that when decisions like this come down, and when we allow administrations to do things like this, really scare people from speaking saying that this viewpoint isn’t allowed here, if you speak this viewpoint, you’re out of here, that it allows the line to move to your point, you called it floodgates, but I would just say the line of defense moves forward, and that means that when they start coming for the groups you do think you care about or that you are a part of, the line is already moved.

And we know that once we make bad law in this country, it takes decades and sometimes centuries to get back even to better, let alone, to best, to most humane, where people are thriving, people are well, there’s an equitable society. I mean, we haven’t even, that’s aspirational. We haven’t even touched that yet. But when the line starts moving and inching creeping forward, and we all stay silent because it’s like, that’s not our people or that’s not my issue or that’s not my concern, the line creeps so that when it is your turn, when it is your issue, when it is your community, that line’s already moved and now your battle is so much harder. And so I think this administration is being so intentional about who it’s targeting. It’s starting international students. It’s targeting Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims for speaking out for their own people’s right to life and dignity, by the way, and their own broader worlds right to life and dignity.

And they’re also targeting a lot of laborers who come from Central and South America. They’re targeting people who are from countries that we may not politically agree with. They’re targeting all of these groups because they think that nobody’s going to say anything about it. And it’s our job to hold the line. It is our job to say as the question, are the kids all right? The kids are not all right. And so all of us need to start expending that capital that we have to hold the line. And obviously the goal would be to push the line back forward into that thriving space, but at least for now, hold the line and don’t think that the Mahmouds of the world don’t impact you because that is false, and we will unfortunately learn the hard way.

Marc Steiner:

So I wonder if you could talk a bit about what you see as any historic or judicial history that gives weight to them to do this. It’s not an isolated moment, I think, in our history.

Amy Greer:

Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, one thing that is interesting, and folks can actually go see this for themselves, but that case I mentioned, a UPV Rubio, that court released a bunch of trial exhibits that previously had not been available to the public. And I think one of the things that was interesting in one of the documents in there is that the State Department acknowledged that the use of this provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that they used to target Mahmoud actually hasn’t been used in this way previously, that it’s a new use of this statute, which I thought was really interesting that they’re even acknowledging it. However, to your point, and I think this is really critical, is we have a long history in the United States of finding creative ways to suppress speech and to suppress action mobilization, community growth. I mean, I think we can go back a very long way, but I am a new student to reconstruction. I don’t know a ton about that era, but from what I’ve read and from what I understand, a lot of the criminal laws that emanated out of that, the Black Code or Jim Crow or however you title, a lot of those laws were created in a way to make it hard for black communities to gather safely

Black communities to make a living so that they’re not constantly worried about just keeping a roof over their head and food in their mouth. They’re so worried about survival because of all these laws that it’s harder to turn outward toward community. And also, of course, the famous McCarthyite era targeting alleged communist people or people who hold socialist views or communist views in the United States. And of course, Palestinians, Palestinians have always been targeted in the United States for speaking out of their existence, first of all, let alone any rights that follow. But even just claiming identity as Palestinian can be in and of itself, a triggering event for reaction and punishment. And so I think a lot of our laws that we’ve created over the years have been in reaction to successful community-based grassroots mobilization that has made it a lot harder for people to feel safe gathering.

And I just want to point out that the Congress has been very busy on this as well. People may be aware that they’ve been sending letters to unions, to professional associations, to universities and other groups requesting membership roles, requesting who attended certain events, requesting who selected certain speakers. So there’s all kinds of through lines here that somebody could do an amazing teach-in on the through lines of the ways in which the law has been weaponized to silence, whether it be through criminalization, whether it be through lawfare, where those third party actors again haul people into court in civil suits, which is happening a lot to Palestinians and to people in solidarity with Palestine. These third party groups are hauling them into court in civil cases, the use of house committees to humiliate and bring people in and force people to turn over records through subpoenas, et cetera.

So there’s a swirl of through line where all of this we’ve seen before. And also are we shapeshift? We’re very good at shape shifting. And so it’s easy then to say, well, this isn’t that. But actually when you look more closely, you realize it is. It’s just in a slightly different shape. And the last thing I’ll say that I think is really critical as far as sort of that historical through line that makes this moment a little bit different is the capacity for surveillance technology adds a whole other level. You heard Marco Rubio speaking about this catch and revoke kind of thing where they were doing broad sweeps of social media posts and releasing advising for people applying for visas that they had to be willing to turn their phone over to have it examined to see what positions they hold before they be granted a visa. And so I think the through lines are all there from history. And also this new moment that we’re in technologically allows this long tail that I think we haven’t fully grappled with yet.

Marc Steiner:

And I’m glad you put it the way you did. I think that connection between what killed reconstruction and then what allowed the red scare to take place in the forties, fifties is really a powerful analogy to the moment we face now. Because as horrendous as what’s happening to Mahmoud Khalil is what if they succeed in this? It could open the floodgates for oppression across this country.

Amy Greer:

I think that’s right. I mean, it has, I am sure many of your listeners, I’m even welling up for tears. What I’m about to say is yesterday, anybody who turned on the news saw a five-year-old child with bunny ears being led away by ice.

Marc Steiner:

I saw that.

Amy Greer:

I mean,

Marc Steiner:

I saw that.

Amy Greer:

I can’t even talk.

Marc Steiner:

You can’t

Amy Greer:

See this, but it just creates this visceral reaction. And actually a client of mine recently, an incarcerated client asked me, Amy, I’m wondering, are the children all right that question? And then you see this image of this baby with these bunny ears surrounded by paramilitary being led away. It’s horrifying. So yeah, I mean, what’s happening to Mahmoud and no, and Dean is heartrending and enraging and being up close, knowing them as people. I mean, just want to, your audience knows this, but these are real people. They love each other. If you have ever seen Mahmoud and no do a public presentation, they’re holding hands. And so in tune toward, they’re always turned toward each other. These are humans who love each other and who have this beautiful child together. And it’s so easy in the fire hose that’s coming at us to go up to the intellectual about, well, what’s happening?

And I think it’s really important, and that’s necessary by the way. But I also think that there’s also the through line, not just in history, but in that little boy Liam with his rabbit ears to Dean Mahmoud and nor son to the children of Gaza and all of these things. And I think we need to, as we look at this onslaught and the flooding of the zone that we’re seeing is to hold onto our own humanity by recognizing the individuals in our own communities and in our own spaces that are being so deeply harmed and impacted, and let that be what roots us, grounds us and makes us brave.

Marc Steiner:

Well, lemme just ask a personal question here. I think people listening to us, how are they doing emotionally and how are they doing faith in this onslaught of entire federal government onto their freedom and ability to stay in this country? How are they faring?

Amy Greer:

I don’t want to speak on behalf of how they’re feeling right now, but because they’re such incredible speakers themselves. But I think that it’s overwhelming, I’m sure, and probably terrifying. And also something about them both noir and Mahmoud that I find moving and inspiring and that makes me feel so honored to be part of their world, is I think that they are so clear morally, ethically, in their faith, in their sense of humanity and love for each other, and love for the world. They have such clarity about what they stand for. Mahmoud stands for a Free Palestine. Mahmoud stands for a more equitable society, a world where people don’t have to fear bombs and drones, but also disinvestment and gentrification. I mean, he kind of holds all of these pieces and operates with such clarity there that I think that really provides a fortitude and a grounding that can’t really be shaken even with an entire government machinery coming at them. And I think it’s a lesson. Mahmoud can sometimes be very almost embarrassed about the attention that he receives because he’s like, I haven’t done anything special. I am just

Marc Steiner:

Myself.

Amy Greer:

But I have shared with him previously that clarity with which you root everything in Palestine and everything in sort of a liberatory framework for all people, every person, and a desire for a thriving society. And I think that when any of us Mahmoud and others root yourself really firmly in that really clear, focused way, I think a lot of courage comes from there. And so even as they are facing the machinery of the US government, I think that sort of rooting in love and the possibility of a better future and for a possibility for a better future for their own baby is incredibly fortifying.

Marc Steiner:

Amy, I just want to first all thank you for time today, but even more importantly, I want to thank you for the intellect power and vision you bring to this work you’re doing in this case, because it’s one of the single most important cases that we’re facing today in terms of what the future could hold, not for their just Mahmoud’s family, but for our country. And so I really do appreciate it, and I will stay in touch. Yes,

Amy Greer:

Please.

Marc Steiner:

As it unfolds. And we can talk as you have time.

Amy Greer:

Yes, absolutely. And to your listeners, keep fighting. Don’t let them pull us apart from each other. Our job now is to hold the fabrics of our communities together, to show up together, to show up for each other and to not be cowed. And I really am proud of Baltimore, and I’m proud of the community that’s risen up around Mahmoud and tended to him from near and afar, and the work continues. So happy to be here and happy to keep grounding us in what’s needed.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you so much.

Amy Greer:

Thank you. Take

Marc Steiner:

Care.

Once again, I want to thank attorney Amy Greer for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebdon for running the program. Our audio editor Steven Frank for working his magic Producer Roset for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Amy Greer for joining us today and for the work that she does. So for the crew here at Through News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.