Silencing the Future
Trump's Crackdown on Student Activism is Textbook Authoritarianism. Dictators fear students, recognising their collective power to ignite social change.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian graduate student at the University of Columbia, was seized and detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Saturday 8th, March.
"We're facing a horrifying reality that our own student, a member of the Columbia community, has become a political prisoner here in the United States,"
Professor Michael Thaddeus - Columbia University
Despite being a lawful permanent resident holding a green card, he was told his student visa was being revoked, and he has been imprisoned and threatened with deportation. His eight-month pregnant wife, a US citizen, was also threatened with arrest by immigration officials.
The US Department of Homeland Security says that their Artificial Intelligence system flagged Mahmoud's involvement in protest against Columbia's financial ties to Israel and Israel's genocide in Palestine as being in breach of the President's Executive order on anti-semitism.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has confirmed Mahmoud's arrest, saying the State Department will 'catch and revoke' the green cards and visas of Hamas supporters, using an AI program analysing social media accounts. However, no evidence has been provided linking Khalil to Hamas. He remains detained but has not been charged with any crime. He also previously passed extensive vetting as an employee of the British Government.
Mr Khalil's lawyers are petitioning that constitutional rights - to free speech, protest and assembly, are being infringed, and he is being illegally persecuted in retaliation for protected political speech. On Monday, a US District Judge, Jesse M. Furman of the Southern District of New York, ordered a temporary block on his deportation while his case is being considered.
Rubio's personal involvement is crucial, as the order to deport rests on a rarely used clause;
"An alien whose 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 is deportable."
Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act
This arrest marks a significant escalation in Trump's authoritarian approach to governance, using state machinery to suppress and intimidate those who oppose or criticise the administration. Mr Khalil is the first known arrest under the new foreign-student policy, but President Trump took to social media to promise it was only beginning and that there would be many more.
While much of Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric has focussed on 'illegal immigrants', his immigration policies have quickly spread to threaten and impact law-abiding American citizens, legal immigrants and permanent residents. This case has some disturbing novel developments. In particular, there is a rapidly expanding use of artificial intelligence as a tool of surveillance.
AI Mass Surveillance
The Department of Homeland Security funds research programs, including "Soft Target Engineering to Neutralise the Threat Reality" or SENTRY; the scope of SENTRY openly aspires to mass, unconsented, surveillance. It aims to analyse hundreds of thousands of crowded spaces in the United States accessed by tens of millions of people each day and develop tools, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
"for data mining of social media, geospatial data platforms, and other sources of information to extract insights on potential threats."
It's claimed this is only done with the best of intentions: to prevent mass shootings or other terrorist attacks and protect 'National Security'. But in the hands of an administration that designates any dissent as a 'threat', it becomes totalitarian.
It is criminal for people to offer 'material support' to designated terrorist groups, but even at face value, what Mahmoud has been accused of falls short - Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union told CNN.
"The claim is that his opposition to the activities of Israel with regard to the Palestinians are grounds for him to be deported. And that is simply illegal,"
Donna Lieberman NYCLU
If this administration succeeds in criminalising criticism, it will be the end of the First Amendment, which protects free speech in America. Even if they ultimately fail to deport Mahmoud, they may succeed in their aim to intimidate Students from criticising the American Government or Israel.
Authoritarian Leaders Fear Students
It's no coincidence that students are bearing the brunt of the initial crackdown. Systemically silencing dissenting youth voices comes from the classic playbook of authoritarian regimes, which recognise students' capacity for mobilisation and change.
From Moscow to Belgrade and from Tehran to Tiananmen Square, student activism has been a pivotal force against authoritarianism. To understand why authoritarian leaders fear students, look at the 'Velvet Revolution' of 1989 in Czechoslovakia. Sparked by a peaceful student demonstration violently suppressed by police, this brutal act galvanised public sentiment against the communist regime. Within weeks, the regime collapsed.
In Serbia in 2000, students played a crucial role in toppling Slobodan Milošević's dictatorship. Their courage and relentless pursuit of democracy revealed how even entrenched authoritarian regimes can fall when challenged by organised youth movements.
Ivan Marovic, now Executive Director of the International Centre of Non-Violent Conflict (ICNC), was the leader of the Serbian student movement Otpor ( Resistance), advocating for non-violent protest, he explains that students' capacity for mobilisation profoundly threatens dictatorships precisely because youth movements carry moral credibility untainted by power.
Trump's administration sees this potential threat, and is reacting in a way already laid out by Putin.
The Myth of 'National Security'
The narrative employed by Trump's administration—that revoking visas of politically engaged international students is essential to ‘national security’—is both familiar and troubling. The same rhetoric is used extensively by the 'strongmen' leaders he admires such as Erdoğan in Turkey and Vladimir Putin in Russia, to justify crackdowns on students, intellectuals, and journalists who questioned state policy.
Adrian Shabaz of Freedom House, a bi-partisan American organisation founded in the 1940s to promote freedom and fight fascism, says,
"…a cohort of countries is moving toward digital authoritarianism by embracing the Chinese model of extensive censorship and automated surveillance systems. ... the internet can be used to disrupt democracies as surely as it can destabilise dictatorships."
The Consequences of Suppressing Dissent
Yet, authoritarian suppression rarely leads to lasting stability. It more frequently triggers radicalisation, alienation, and instability. Students whose rights are stripped away may initially retreat, and their peers be temporarily cowed, but suppression often galvanises a deeper commitment to resistance. Historical patterns show clearly that authoritarian overreach frequently sows the seeds of regime collapse. In Serbia, the Milošević government's heavy-handed approach against student protestors backfired spectacularly, ultimately strengthening the opposition. Repressing students rarely leads to stability—it merely delays an inevitable backlash.
Where Does This End?
Trump's actions are heavy-handed, unconstitutional, and un-American.
The First Amendment protects American's right to assemble, speak freely, and protest. These are the foundational pillars of American democracy. They allow Americans to collectively express, challenge, and demand accountability from their government without fear of repression or censorship. Historically, these rights have empowered social movements from civil rights marches to anti-war demonstrations, underscoring the essential role of dissent and public discourse in shaping a democratic society.
Foreign-born students are the canaries in the coal mine. They can be targeted with a fig-leaf of legality based on the personal belief of the Secretary of State. "This is the first arrest of many to come" suggests they have already drawn up a 'hit list. Trump's racist anti-immigrant rhetoric is now being used to crush political dissent - and it's now clear law-abiding citizens - like Mahmoud Khalil's wife, are facing intimidation and threats.
American melting-pot democracy rests in its capacity to tolerate and integrate dissent, not suppress it through increasingly authoritarian tactics. Trump's administration, by weaponising visas and algorithms, accelerates democratic erosion. By adopting technology-driven visa cancellations and mass surveillance of dissenters, Trump is undermining democratic legitimacy.
History consistently demonstrates that such repressive measures, far from safeguarding 'national security', undermine the very freedoms essential to democratic stability.
Yet it also teaches us that organised, informed student activism remains one of the most powerful counterweights to authoritarian abuses.
