WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

This is on point. I'm Megna Chakrabardi.

On March 8th, ICE agents were waiting in the foyer of a Columbia University student housing complex.

They were waiting for Mahmoud Khalil and his wife to return from dinner.

When they did, ICE agents arrested Khalil on the spot and have been holding him in a Louisiana detention facility ever since.

Mahmud Khalil is a green card holder. He is a legal permanent resident of the United States.

He was also one of the leaders of the student pro-Palestinian protests that paralyzed Columbia University last year.

Now, most protests are a protective form of speech in the United States.

The Trump administration arrested Khalil for what it says are his, quote, anti-Semitic and, quote, anti-American actions.

They seek to deport him.

And to do so, the White House is invoking a little used clause in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act.

For those of you who follow immigration issues closely, this is not the 1965 Immigration Act

that effectively abolished immigration quotas in the United States.

This is the much earlier 1952 Act, also known as the McCarron-Walter Act.

It was passed amid anti-communist fervor in the early Cold War, and it includes

a subsection that provides for the deportation of immigrants whose, quote, criminal activity,

endangers public safety, or national security, end quote.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on CBS's Face the Nation just yesterday, and host Margaret

Brennan pressed Rubio to provide evidence that Mahmoud Khalil's protest activities threatened

U.S. national security.

But is there any evidence of a link to terrorism, or is it just his point of view?

Yeah, they take over, I mean, do not, I mean, you should watch the news. These guys take over entire buildings.

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