Mahmoud Khalil: Good Trouble In Troubling Times

It is an understatement to say that the times in which we are living in America are troubling. But it is the truth. These times are troubling. This past weekend, on a Saturday night, Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old Palestinian activist, recent graduate of Columbia University, and legal permanent resident of the United States was arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Khalil was arrested in his apartment in Manhattan, in front of his wife, who is a United States citizen and eight months pregnant, and he has since been transferred to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center—over 1300 miles away.

Kahlil’s arrest, as the Associated Press reports, is the “first publicly known deportation effort” by the Trump administration to target students, particularly noncitizen students, who participated in protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza on college and university campuses last spring. Khalil, as Ana Ley writes via the New York Times, “emerged as a public face of students opposed to the war, leading demonstrations and granting interviews.” A couple of days after Khalil’s arrest, President Donald Trump wrote in a post via Truth Social:

“This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”

On Wednesday, a federal judge, Jesse Furman, upheld his temporary blocking of Khalil’s deportation proceedings. Khalil has not been charged with any criminal offenses.

In his book, No Name in the Street, James Baldwin writes:

“When power translates itself into tyranny, it means that the principles on which that power depended, and which were its justification, are bankrupt. When this happens, and it is happening now, power can only be defended by thugs and mediocrities—and seas of blood.”

Donald Trump is a tyrant, and the tyranny of the MAGA triumvirate that is the Trump administration, Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and Republican members of the U.S. Congress is being defended (and energized) by “thugs and mediocrities.” Power, as Baldwin writes, “can have no morality in itself.” Power, rather, “is yet dependent on human energy, on the wills and desires of human beings.” At present, the human energy and human beings wielding power in America are being guided by the wills and desires of people who are characteristically cruel and qualitatively unqualified .

Mahmoud Khalil being arrested and detained by ICE is only one of the latest examples in a long history of American presidents weaponizing the federal government to suppress dissent by the American people. In troubling times such as these, people tend towards seeking solace in the presumed safety of the status quo. Keep things business as usual. Keep your head down. Keep quiet. However, even if and when it is found, safety tends to be tenuous, if not illusory, particularly for the most marginalized and vulnerable people in society. Black people living in America, for instance, have never truly experienced safety. To be clear, for Black people, there are times and places that have been safer. However, in a country founded upon white supremacy and racist violence, for Black people, safety remains elusive.

In these troubling times, we would do well to find guidance and wisdom, and to draw inspiration and strength, from those who are well acquainted with, and have been through, troubling times. As Baldwin writes:

“A person does not lightly elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home among one's compatriots than be mocked and detested by them.”

Thinking of the Negro spiritual, “Wade In The Water,” I am reminded that it is sometimes necessary to forgo the familiar and relative safety of the riverbank and to wade in the water, trusting that “God’s gonna trouble the water” for your good.  I am also reminded of these words from John Lewis: “Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.” In these troubling times, there is a seemingly paradoxical yet incredibly real need for troublemakers. May people of good conscience and good courage be strengthened and be empowered to stand for and stand with their neighbors in the fight for justice.

Free Mahmoud Khalil.