Susan Sarandon is speaking up in support of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and green-card holder who was detained by ICE over his pro-Palestinian activism.
The “Thelma & Louise” actor showed up outside a Manhattan federal courthouse during a Wednesday hearing in his immigration case. She slammed attempts to deport Khalil over his political activity as an assault on free speech.
Speaking to reporters in front of the courthouse, Sarandon said, “No matter where you stand on genocide, freedom of speech is an issue, is a right, that we all have. And this is a turning point in the history and the freedom of this country.”
Khalil, who helped lead Columbia’s high-profile protests against Israel’s war in Gaza last spring, was arrested by immigration authorities at his Manhattan apartment on Saturday.
Despite telling ICE that he was a legal permanent resident of the U.S., he was subsequently transferred to a detention center in Louisiana.
President Donald Trump called Khalil’s arrest the first of “many to come” in a Monday post on Truth Social, where he also described pro-Palestinian activists as “terrorist sympathizers.”
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Khalil had not been charged with a crime, nor has the government provided any evidence to support their claim that he’s a Hamas sympathizer.
While Trump appears intent on targeting people’s right to protest, Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted Khalil’s deportation case is “not about free speech.”
“This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with,” he told reporters during a trip to Ireland on Wednesday. “No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card, by the way.”