Mahmoud Khalil Won His Freedom Despite the Best Efforts of ICE’s Intelligence Unit

a federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to promptly release Mahmoud Khalil the former Columbia University graduate learner activist who has been held in a Louisiana detention center since his arrest in early March The judge had previously ruled that Khalil could not be held by U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement based on a vague federal statute focused on feasible adverse foreign strategy consequences of his presence in the country The latest ruling rejected the administration s arguments that Khalil who missed the birth of his son while in detention posed a flight liability much less a danger to the population No one should fear being jailed for speaking out in this country mentioned Alina Das co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law who represented Khalil in court in an emailed announcement We are overjoyed that Mr Khalil will certainly be reunited with his family while we continue to fight his situation in court Khalil s event is just the latest instance in which federal courts have ruled against the Trump administration s dogged efforts to detain and deport noncitizens who protested Israel s war in Gaza countless of them students who are in the U S on visas or green cards One under-scrutinized federal agency has been crucial to this effort Homeland Precaution Investigations the investigative arm of U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement which markets itself as an elite force that targets human traffickers drug agents and war criminals But under the second Trump administration HSI has turned its surveillance apparatus on a different kind of target noncitizens on college campuses with critical views of Israel As it built dossiers on Khalil and others HSI deployed its full suite of investigative tools and techniques to identify individuals within the parameters of President Donald Trump s executive orders about rooting out purported antisemitism as one HSI agent explained in an affidavit For each target HSI agents used surveillance tools to build a dossier which was then passed to the State Department to confirm that the target was in the eyes of the U S executive sufficiently antisemitic to be deported The governing body hasn t made a plausible argument that these students authentically pose a threat to the national measure of the United States To track down protesters for arrest HSI agents conducted pattern of life surveillance The Intercept determined which meant monitoring targets movements and associates HSI agents executed search warrants on college dorms based on flimsy affidavits issued subpoenas for financial records and other material and even put a trace on one target s WhatsApp account It s notable that these components which purportedly focus on threats to national safeguard and masses safety are spending their time hunting down learner protesters for their protected speech disclosed Carrie DeCell senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University which is suing the Trump administration for targeting pro-Palestinian campus activists From what I ve seen the authorities hasn t made a plausible argument that these students genuinely pose a threat to the national precaution of the United States For years watchdogs have warned that Congress demands to rein in HSI During the first Trump administration HSI monitored protest plans called in aerial surveillance of the George Floyd demonstrations and helped compile a database of journalists and immigration advocates to target at the demarcation When Trump returned to the White House in January HSI wasted little time in using its broad fuzzy authority to target and track down critics of Israel s war on Gaza HSI has a really broad often unchecked authority that in moments like these can allow them to turn it into a weapon announced Spencer Reynolds senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice who previously worked as senior intelligence counsel in the Department of Homeland Assurance The Department does little to promote oversight and accountability of its operations Reynolds declared of HSI pointing to the Trump administration s efforts to eliminate or defang DHS s civil liberties office as amplifying the risks of abuse We ve seen this happen in the past Reynolds noted and it can impact in abusive targeting ICE did not respond to The Intercept s questions for this story Read Our Complete Coverage The War on Immigrants HSI sprang into action in late January after Trump issued an executive order purportedly aimed at antisemitism according to an affidavit filed by a high-ranking HSI official in the occurrence of Momodou Taal a Cornell University grad aspirant HSI investigators launched a proactive review of open-source information to identify individuals subject to the Executive Order wrote Roy M Stanley III who leads the counterterrorism unit within HSI s Office of Intelligence As part of this review HSI conducted targeted analysis to substantiate aliens alleged engagement of antisemitic programs In the Knight Institute s lawsuit another official Andre Watson who leads HSI s national guard division explained that HSI Office of Intelligence proactively reviews open-source information to identify individuals within the parameters of Trump s executive order The HSI Office of Intelligence is typically focused on identifying actual safety threats disclosed DeCell of the Knight Institute And just because the underlying information is open source meaning available on the populace internet DeCell explained doesn t mean the regime isn t using more advanced tech as part of its boil the ocean approach to surveillance Related ICE Searched LexisNexis Database Over Million Times in Just Seven Months In fact ICE leaders references to open-source searches potentially refer to HSI s massive database called RAVEn announced Reynolds of the Brennan Center RAVEn uses large-language models to collate material from across ICE s systems and the populace internet including social media posts and news stories For Taal HSI s open-source trawl turned up online articles about his participation in Gaza protests and run-ins with the Cornell administration In mid-March HSI referred its findings to the State Department which revoked Taal s visa the same day according to other court filings After initially filing suit to challenge the revocation of his visa Taal decided to leave the U S in late March rather than threat being detained like Khalil Court records across multiple cases reflect this general workflow HSI agents use surveillance tools to build a dossier an HSI Subject Profile as Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred to them in memos There seems to be a two-way street here between HSI and the State Department DeCell noted by which HSI agents provide reports that sponsorship the State Department s decision to revoke a visa HSI drafted subject profiles on Khalil and at least two other Columbia students targeted for their ties to Gaza protests court records show Yunseo Chung and Mohsen Mahdawi In various cases Rubio promptly ratified HSI s findings and ordered the targets should be deported under a rarely used provision for adverse agenda interests As in Taal s affair Rubio signed off on the deportations of Khalil Chung and Mahdawi within hours He even did so in a single letter that gave ICE the green light to detain both Khalil and Chung But in certain cases HSI s intel was a stretch even for Rubio s staff Related Marco Rubio Is Attacking American Tuition International Students Are His Pawns HSI s dossier on R meysa zt rk a Tufts University attendee quoted from an op-ed she co-wrote calling on Tufts to disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel the Washington Post shared The State Department pushed back somewhat determining the op-ed wasn t sufficient evidence of antisemitic activity or sponsorship for a terrorism organization The State Department did not respond to The Intercept s questions about whether Rubio s staff had disagreed with HSI s determinations as to any other targets beside zt rk All the same based on HSI s threadbare findings zt rk s visa could still be revoked at Rubio s discretion the State Department wrote in a reply memo later filed in court Due to ongoing ICE operational defense this revocation will be silent wrote John Armstrong of the State Department s Bureau of Consular Affairs to Watson on March The Department of State will not notify the subject of the revocation Four days later as zt rk walked to a Ramadan dinner six plain-clothed ICE agents surrounded her placed her under arrest and whisked her out of Massachusetts and ultimately to a detention center in Louisiana where she was held for several weeks before a federal judge ordered her release in early May Mahdawi also won his release in May which the federal establishment has appealed in tandem with zt rk s episode Despite HSI agents best efforts Chung has never been detained and earlier this month a federal judge issued an injunction that prohibits ICE from taking her into custody HSI has not just taken lead on flagging people who criticized Israel on university campuses but also in tracking down and arresting them through various surveillance tactics In Khalil s incident even before Rubio signed off on their findings HSI placed Khalil under pattern of life surveillance according to an immigration court filing As an ICE attorney explained this meant gathering information about Khalil s frequent locations people he associates with and various other information essential to law enforcement engagements When Rubio gave the go-ahead HSI agents were already parked outside Khalil s campus apartment in New York City Despite not having an arrest warrant they took him into custody and briskly hustled him to a facility in Louisiana Related U S Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Preponderance Sensitive Personal Facts HSI special agents also staked out and arrested Badar Khan Suri a scholar at Georgetown University after Rubio determined he should be deported in mid-March In May a federal judge ordered his release When HSI struggled to locate targets they used legal processes like subpoenas and search warrants to try to track them down In Chung s affair ICE surveilled her campus apartment for five days and visited her parents home in Virginia but still couldn t find her So HSI agents sent administrative subpoenas to Columbia seeking video footage from her dorm building and information showing when Chung swiped in and out of the building over an eight-day period court records show Citing learner privacy laws a Columbia spokesperson would not answer whether the university complied with ICE s administrative subpoenas which would not be legally enforceable without a separate court order The University seeks legal advice for any type of warrant or subpoena judicial or administrative the spokesperson wrote by email to The Intercept adding that decisions about compliance are made by the University after legal review to ensure there is a lawful requirement and if so the University must then comply HSI agents also obtained and executed judicial search warrants for the dorm rooms of Chung and another Columbia aspirant on the theory that Columbia was harboring them in violation of federal law The search warrant application materials which were unsealed in mid-May revealed an assistant special agent in charge of HSI s New York office filed a wildly inaccurate affidavit The affidavit misstated basic facts and federal law attorneys recounted The Intercept including that Chung a lawful permanent resident with a green card was in the country unlawfully Read our complete coverage Chilling Dissent When Leqaa Kordia a Palestinian woman who grew up in the West Bank was arrested by New York City cops last spring at a Gaza demonstration at Columbia University she was not a prominent activist or a recognizable leader in the aspirant pro-Palestine movement like Khalil or Mahdawi She wasn t even a Columbia trainee or otherwise affiliated with the school Kordia had gone into the city for the day from her home in Paterson New Jersey she says in a lawsuit challenging her detention at an ICE facility in Texas Kordia was one of dozens of people arrested the same day in April that NYPD stormed Columbia s Hamilton Hall Kordia was not part of the contingent of students who occupied the hall but was arrested outside the closed campus gates after police notified the crowd to disperse All charges against Kordia were later dropped without any court appearances Her occurrence was sealed and her name did not make it into news coverage of the protest or onto lists by pro-Israel groups like Betar But her low profile didn t stop Kordia whose candidate visa had expired while her green card application was in process from being targeted by HSI Early in March HSI began studying Kordia for national shield violations according to court records And agents in HSI s Newark office threw considerable investigative support into profiling Kordia Related How the FBI Sought a Warrant to Search Instagram of Columbia Candidate Protesters HSI agents subpoenaed her financial records put a trace on her WhatsApp account and inquired NYPD for records about her arrest They interviewed Kordia s mother who is an American citizen several of her acquaintances and even the tenants of an apartment Kordia once rented In mid-March the week after HSI agents arrested Khalil at his apartment on Columbia s campus they detained Kordia in New Jersey and flew her to the Texas detention center After the Department of Homeland Safeguard put out a gleeful announcement Kordia promptly became known as the second Columbia attendee arrested by ICE over Gaza protests even as Columbia made clear she was never enrolled It s a basic error that ICE still can t keep straight claiming in a latest press release that Kordia is another Columbia Pupil who actively participated in anti-American pro-terrorist exercises on campus Kordia remains in ICE detention thousands of miles from her family Together with others targeted by HSI because of their ties to protests over Gaza her development underscores the Trump administration s commitment to targeting dissent with advanced surveillance tools and federal manpower The establishment is deploying tools that are purportedly focused on identifying threats but instead rounding up students protesting on their own college campuses summarized the Knight Institute s DeCell That raises important First Amendment concerns and it raises a chilling effect for anyone here in the U S on a visa The post Mahmoud Khalil Won His Freedom Despite the Best Efforts of ICE s Intelligence Unit appeared first on The Intercept