Immigration enforcement agents on Saturday arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and Palestinian activist.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at Shannon Airport in Ireland that the detention and possible deportation of former Columbia University anti-Israel protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil is "not about free speech.

Khalil’s arrest could have a chilling effect on on- and off-campus protests involving people who aren’t citizens, said Columbia University immigration law professor Elora Mukherjee. Already, she said, it had provoked panic and fear among immigrant students on campus.

Columbia University is fighting two wars at once. One rages publicly against President Trump, whose administration in recent days ordered the arrest of a student protester and canceled federal funds to the Ivy League school over allegations of antisemitism.

The federal government has terminated $400 million in funds to the Ivy League university although investigations into alleged antisemitic harassment are continuing. The Trump administration’s sudden and fairly unprecedented termination of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to Columbia University raises worries among the nation’s K-12 schools that something similar could happen to their funding,

Columbia University loses $400 million in grants, contracts for mishandling campus antisemitism. See Also Trump administration yanks $400M in grants, contracts from Columbia University over antisemitism on campus Hitting Columbia University in the pocket could not have come any sooner (“WH $laps Poisoned Ivy,