ACT NOW: Demand Justice for Immigrant Communities Under Attack, Free Mahmoud Khalil & Defend Our Right to Protest
Mainers must stand up against repression of all refugee and migrant community members and demand the release of Palestinian student protester Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil’s case reflects a broader pattern of infringing on free speech and targeting and criminalizing immigrant communities - it is time to take a stand.
Three of Maine’s four Congressional representatives: Jared Golden, Susan Collins, and Angus King - as well as Governor Janet Mills - have remained silent in the face of this racist, illegal act of state repression. We demand that Maine politicians take a stand in defense of free expression. We demand that they oppose the arrest and deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, and oppose the escalating raids, deportations and imprisonments targeting Maine’s immigrant communities.
ICE agents unlawfully arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and recent graduate of Columbia University. Mahmoud is now at imminent risk of deportation—a devastating act of retaliation for his courageous stand for human rights.
Mahmoud is a lawful permanent resident who was exercising his constitutional right to peacefully protest. He has not been charged with a crime. Yet ICE has thrown him into a notoriously cruel detention facility in Louisiana and declared that they have “revoked” his green card. This is not just an attack on Mahmoud—it’s an attack on free speech, dissent, and human rights.
Mahmoud’s arrest is part of a broader, dangerous pattern. The State Department recently announced plans to revoke visas and green cards for students affiliated with pro-Palestine protests, targeting those who dare to speak out. President Trump has also announced his intent to invoke the Alien Enemies Act - last used during World War II for the shameful mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans in internment camps - to further enable the government’s crackdown on dissent. This is political persecution, plain and simple.
Immigrant, refugee, and asylee communities—especially those from Palestine, the Arab and Muslim world, Central America, and Black and brown communities—have long been brutalized by the US government’s draconian and discriminatory immigration policies. Families are torn apart, lives are destroyed. And both political parties have allowed this cruelty to continue.
