1. United States
2. N.Y.
3. Letter

I am asking you to do everything in your power to secure the release from ICE custody of U.S. permanent resident and student activist Mahmoud Khalil. I am truly appalled by the overreach of federal agents unlawfully detaining and threatening with deportation a New York City student activist for Palestinian rights at Columbia University. Abducting a legal resident of our state from his New York apartment on March 8 in retaliation for exercising his right to political speech and assembly is truly worrying. It opens the door to denunciation and intimidation methods waged against any outspoken members of civil society, endangering our first amendment rights. Khalil is currently being held in ICE custody out of New York State, away from his wife, a U.S. citizen, eight months pregnant, and his lawyers. The Trump administration is utilizing methods from authoritarian regimes the world over and boldly foreshadows this "arrest" as only the beginning of further arrests and deportations. Now is the time for our public officials and state legislature to start fighting back. I urge you to immediately and publicly condemn this action, to call for Khalil's release, and do everything in their power to protect the first amendment rights of not only student activists and immigrants from the overreach of the Trump administration. This is an absolute outrage and Americans won’t stand for it. Thanks.