Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon condemns the arrest of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil in scathing letter to Secs. Rubio and Noem

U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon is one of three Democrats circulating a letter castigating President Donald J. Trump’s administration for the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and seeking answers from two of his top cabinet members about the case.

Khalil, who helped lead protests at Columbia University against civilian casualties in Gaza, was arrested by immigration officers and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. He is a permanent legal resident of the United States who recently graduated from the school.

The letter, coauthored by U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, (D., Wash.), ranking member of the immigration subcommittee, is addressed to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Scanlon, whose district includes all of Delaware County and parts of South Philadelphia and Montgomery County, is the ranking member of the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.

It was the second letter sent by congressional Democrats to Noem. On Tuesday, 14 Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Summer L. Lee, who represents Pittsburgh, signed a letter demanding Khalil’s immediate release.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman in New York ordered that Khalil, 30, not be deported while the court considers legal challenges brought by his attorneys.

Khalil, who is legally considered a permanent U.S. resident with a green card and has not been charged with a crime, is a graduate student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and finished his requirements for a master’s degree in December. He and his wife are expecting a child this spring and live in a university-owned apartment complex near campus.

On Saturday night, he was inside campus housing when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers entered and took him into custody, said Amy Greer, one of his lawyers. The agents told Greer that they were revoking Khalil’s green card.

Greer said the agents initially refused to say over the phone why they were detaining Khalil and at one point hung up on her. The agents then said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke his student visa, Greer said. When she said he did not have a student visa and was a permanent resident with a green card, the agents said they would revoke that instead.

Khalil, who was born in Syria and is the grandson of Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland, his lawyer said, was taken to New Jersey to be held, then was moved to an immigration detention center in Louisiana.

Until Wednesday, the only Pennsylvania representative to weigh in on the case was Lee of Western Pennsylvania.

“Every Member of Congress should be outraged at this blatant erosion of our constitutional rights. We are beyond just a slippery slope,” Lee said on the Hill earlier this week.

Rubio, speaking to reporters in Ireland on Wednesday, defended the arrest and accused Khalil of partaking in antisemitic, pro-Hamas protests. He said foreign-born immigrants can have their visas or green cards revoked and be kicked out for such activity.

“This is not about free speech,” Rubio said, according to the New York Times. “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.”

A draft version of the new Democratic letter, obtained by The Inquirer, says the arrest is based on “vague language in the Immigration and Nationality Act,” claiming his speech has “ambiguous ‘foreign policy consequences” for the United States, and accuses the administration of failing to provide any explanation for what those consequences are.

“This deployment of a dusty old statutory section to punish speech is a dangerous attack on both the First Amendment and on all, including lawful permanent residents, who enjoy its protection,” the legislators wrote. “This maneuver evokes the Alien and Sedition Acts and McCarthyism. It is the playbook of authoritarians, not of elected officials in a democratic society who claim to be champions of free speech.”

The letter goes on to ask Rubio and Noem how many times the section has been used to place a lawful permanent resident in removal proceedings, and what grounds there are for doing so with Khalil.

“While there may be disagreement with Mr. Khalil’s speech, it is his Constitutional right in our democracy to express his political views,” the letter says. “That is why every American should be outraged by this brazen attempt to use the power of the United States government to silence and punish people who do not agree with the sitting President.”

In January, Trump signed an executive order against antisemitism that targeted what he described as “Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.” A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Khalil’s arrest was the fulfillment of Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism. The Trump administration says the nationwide protests in solidarity with Gaza are antisemitic rather than First Amendment-protected demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians.

Columbia University became a focal point of a U.S. pro-Palestinian protest movement that swept across college campuses nationwide last year.

Ramzi Kassem, one of Khalil’s lawyers, told the judge at the Wednesday hearing in lower Manhattan that Khalil was “identified, targeted and detained” because of his advocacy for Palestinian rights and his First Amendment protected speech.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the administration moved to deport him under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state the power to deport a noncitizen on foreign policy grounds.

Last week, the Trump administration pulled $400 million in funding from Columbia University, along with nine other universities that had pro-Gaza demonstrations, claiming the schools failed to take steps against antisemitism.

Kassem, Khalil’s lawyer, said the legal grounds cited by the government to detain Khalil were “vague” and “rarely used,” and were disguising the true reason: “retaliation and punishment for the exercise of free speech.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article.