What the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil signals

The Gestapo. The Stasi. The NKVD. SMERSH. ICE. Know what they have in common? They are all secret police forces that dragged their own citizens away in totalitarian regimes of the past.

Wait?! ICE?! Immigration and Customs Enforcement? Like “United States of America Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

Yes. That ICE.

That’s not a part of a totalitarian regime of the past!

Oh. Your right. That last one is the present. Welcome to the MAGA era. This isn’t our Founding Fathers' United States anymore. It’s Donald Trump and Elon Musk's.

Saturday night (March 8, 2025), Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident of the United States, married to a citizen of the United States, and a student at Columbia University, was arrested by ICE agents. His crime? Acting upon first amendment rights. Or perhaps it was having a Middle Eastern name and brown skin. It doesn’t really matter to Trump. Or as one late-night comedian joked, MAGA’s “god-king-president.” What the god-king-president says goes. Or at least, he thinks so.

Mahmoud Khalil and his wife were walking into their apartment building. A group of men from an unmarked vehicle approached the two. The men were wearing plain clothes. They had guns and badges. They identified themselves as federal agents for Homeland Security (ICE is under the Department of Homeland Security). The agents told Khalil that they were revoking his student visa and that his green card had been revoked. Khalil’s wife was threatened with arrest if she didn’t leave the scene. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Minister Marco Rubio were involved personally and threatened similar action against others who protest at universities. The agents were confused by Khalil’s green card. They were upset he called his lawyer. They stated they had an “administrative warrant” and arrested him. He was promptly shipped off to Louisiana, over 1,300 miles away. They’re trying to expedite his deportation. In case you’re wondering, an administrative warrant is not the same as a judicial warrant.

Did I say Ministry of Foreign Affairs? Oops. I meant “State Department.” And “Secretary Marco Rubio.” I got us confused with Russia. It’s hard to tell the difference with the modern-day Gestapo running about detaining citizens and legal permanent residents while a dictator quashes the rights we take for granted in our First Amendment. And let’s not forget the new ICE arrest quotas. Stalin gave his KGB predecessors (the NKVD and SMERSH) arrest quotas, too. Starting to see the similarities?

Recently, Trump threatened to arrest protesters at universities. I suppose he’s making good on his word. That’s not exactly something to be proud of. What other countries and leaders arrest peaceful protesters? In Putin’s Russia, referring to the “special military operation” as a “war” is punishable with years of prison time. About 15,000 protesters have been arrested since the start of the war. In Maduro’s Venezuela, police have no problem cracking down on peaceful protesters, and if they die, they shouldn’t have been protesting in the first place. In Lukashenko’s Belarus protesters were not only arrested but beaten, raped, and killed in jail. In Ebrahim Raisi’s Iran, protestors were brutally beaten, arrested, and even executed. In case you haven’t noticed, the foreign leaders mentioned are usually considered to be “dictators” because they aren’t big fans of democracy, open and fair elections, term limits, or civil rights. Unfortunately for us in the U.S., neither is Trump or co-president Elon.

Mahmoud Khalil isn’t a terrorist. He’s not antisemitic either. He’s a peaceful protestor exercising his First Amendment rights. Those rights haven’t eroded enough yet for the modern-day Gestapo to arrest everyone who speaks out against Trump and his dictator friends. They certainly can start with a brown man protesting the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. Of course, our government will never admit that is happening. They can easily brand him a terrorist sympathizer and antisemite. However, this article isn’t about the issues of Israel and Gaza. The point of this article is that free speech and free assembly are under attack. The United States is no longer behaving like the United States. It’s behaving like a 20th-century dictatorship.

The 20th century had more than enough authoritarian regimes for us to learn our lessons. It wasn’t that long ago. We still have survivors of the Gulag and Nazi concentration camps among us. There’s still a handful of WWII vets alive. Some of the authoritarians lived beyond World War II. The Soviet Union and the other communist countries were long considered our enemies. They tended to be rather repressive places. The lifestyles and standards of living were low, and the freedoms we love here (like free speech) were not to be enjoyed. If you really want to know where the current road leads, read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Be warned. It’s not for the faint of heart. The whole thing is about as long as the first five Harry Potter books. The intensity does not let up. Each and every chapter will devastate its reader. One of the many lessons from the Gulag is that it’s not just communism that failed; it's authoritarianism that fails.

Heed this warning. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is not an isolated incident. His arrest and current attempt of deportation is just the beginning. The courts are upholding the Constitution for the time being. Trump and his MAGA cronies are constantly barraging the legal system with their blitzkrieg of illegal orders. Who’s to say Trump won’t someday ignore the courts as Elon and JD Vance have already encouraged. Trump intends to have his way. He doesn’t care what the law says. If he keeps pushing us down this road, we may end up somewhere we don’t want to be.