Khalil had known that he incurred some risk from his campus advocacy, particularly given the so-called Palestine exception to liberal support for political speech, but he figured that he might, at most, suffer university harassment or discipline. Neither he nor, frankly, longtime political and immigration policy observers like myself expected that his actions would attract not just the attention of but direct intervention from the federal government. “My understanding of the U.S. was that they have a robust Constitution, robust rule of law,” Khalil told me from his apartment, right near the behemoth institution that recently itself bent the knee to Trump in the form of a settlement that gives the administration a hand in admissions and curriculum. “I never hid my face; I didn’t care if I would be doxed … but at no point I felt that the government would go that low in targeting free speech.”
Rather than hanging back, Khalil went on a whirlwind trip in July to the U.S. Capitol, where he turned heads and met almost 20 lawmakers, largely to urge the passage of the Block the Bombs Act, which would curtail military shipments to Israel, and additional action to address the Gaza humanitarian crisis, which had by then extended to the threat of imminent mass starvation. Days earlier, he had filed a federal lawsuit seeking $20 million in damages against the administration that was still angling to detain him.
All of this has left Khalil in a somewhat bizarre situation: He is at once advocate and cause. People have come out to protest on his direct behalf, and he’s a recognizable figure worldwide, a fame that seems to leave him a bit bewildered and a bit uncomfortable. Yet the fact that he didn’t choose his role doesn’t change his conviction that he must rise to the challenge. “It’s a huge responsibility,” he told me, “to see yourself as a ‘symbol’ of the movement, of this attack on freedom of speech.”
One question Khalil can’t answer is what exactly is next, because there will be an after—after the removal proceedings and the lawsuit and the courtrooms. Before his arrest and detainment, he had an advocacy job lined up, putting his fresh graduate degree to work, but now everything is up in the air. “I’m taking it day by day,” he told me. “The killing is still happening. It’s not that I can take a break from that because the genocide does not take a break.” Whatever comes in the long term, Khalil at least has the certainty that it will have something to do with advocating for his people, to use his unexpected platform to help ensure that there is a long term for them, too.”
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