"There Is a Larger Threat Looming Here": Interview with Ramzi Kassem, Mahmoud Khalil's Lawyer

"They are trying to push the envelope as far as it will go"

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Note: After the interview was conducted, Mohsen Mahdawi was released on bail.

Connie Chavez: Can you tell us more about yourself and what work you do?

Ramzi Kassem: I'm Ramzi Kassem. I'm professor of law at the City University of New York School of Law. I co-direct the CLEAR project here at CUNY Law School. It's a clinic and a nonprofit.

We work with communities, clients, and movements that are targeted by the U.S. security state, and we are presently representing Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and others who are either presently detained by ICE or who are student activists at risk of detention by ICE.

CC: What do you think is important for people to understand about these abductions?

RK: The government is very transparently and very explicitly trying to silence dissent.

This is very explicitly an attack on free speech rights. It happens to be free speech that is exercised in defense of Palestinian lives and rights, which of course should be celebrated and should be commended—not punished.

But there is a larger threat looming here to the extent that this government is able to weaponize the immigration system to undercut First Amendment rights and to punish people for exercising those First Amendment rights. So that's a model. That's a template that this administration—and future administrations—will be able to use against any issue set [it] disagrees with.

So it dislikes the fact that folks are speaking up, students are speaking up, in defense of Palestinian rights and in ways that are critical of U.S. and Israeli policy. Well, you know, we're going to detain these students. And the next time around, the same template will be applied to maybe student non-citizens, who are active in defense of racial justice, the rights of minorities, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, abortion, what have you—any set of issues that this administration happens to disagree with. The blueprint that we're seeing in these cases could be applied to try to silence those people.

And it will start with the non-citizens. It will start with the visa holders and undocumented folks and even permanent residents of the United States. But that same logic could be applied to U.S. citizens eventually, because what's happening is weakening First Amendment rights. It's weakening free speech rights. That's what they're trying to do.

So that's all the more reason why these cases are important. What's happening to Mahmoud and to Rümeysa and to Yunseo, it's not just happening to them. We're also in this fight for ourselves and for everybody who feels like they should be able to speak their mind, even if people in power disagree.

CC: What are some of the similarities and differences you see between your cases and the recent abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garcia?

RK: What is equally obvious [in both cases] is that it is an extreme radical assertion of executive power by the Trump administration.

They are trying to push the envelope as far as it will go to see what they can get away with, whether it's in cases like Mahmoud Khalil's or cases like Mr. Abrego Garcia's, where he himself also had legal protection in this country.

Mr. Abrego Garcia had withholding of removal. He had a form of immigration legal relief that should have prevented the government from removing him. What the government did instead was it tried an experimental legal theory and then quickly whisked him out of the country and took him back to El Salvador, a country where he is at significant risk.

They're a form of flirtation with authoritarianism, even if you know we haven't yet arrived, perhaps, at a stage of outright authoritarianism. It's a form of flirtation with that very different undemocratic mode of government. And it has to be seen and named for what it is.

This is all fundamentally political. What happens outside of court is even more important than what happens inside federal courthouses. The amount of pushback that the administration sees on the streets, in the media, in public discourse, that is hopefully what's going to shape the direction that we go in.

CC: What’s next for these students? And how can regular people support them?

RK: I mean, you're asking the most important question, which is, how can we push back?

When I walked out of the first court hearing in Mr. Khalil's case, after I argued on behalf of our team and on his behalf, there were over a thousand people outside. That is really important. Like having people rallying around these court dates to express their viewpoints in solidarity, not just with you know the individual, not just with Mahmoud Khalil or Yunseo Chung, but also with the Palestinian people to show that it is an American movement. It's not going to be silenced. It's not going to be cowed by what the administration is trying to do. And in fact, it's going to backfire. These efforts of silencing and dispersing the movement are actually going to motivate people and mobilize people.

CC: Is there anything else you want to communicate to people?

I can tell you, just having spoken with all of them in the last 24 hours—Mahmoud Khalil from behind bars in Louisiana, Rümeysa Öztürk from behind bars in Louisiana, Yunseo Chung, who remains free, thankfully—all of them are deeply and immensely grateful for every bit of support, every bit of solidarity that folks have shown towards them in different ways. People have shown up for protests, people have spoken out, they've written articles, they've written letters.

So they and their families are immensely grateful, and they really look forward to being able to thank you in person soon.