Instagram online here. Full statement here.
NDSU Solidarity Statement With Political Prisoner Mahmoud Khalil and All Students Persecuted for Political Activism
Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem Union (NDSU), member shop in The Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys – UAW Local 2325 condemns the detention of Mahmoud Khalil and Leqaa Kordia, as well as the increasing repression of student and union organizers and weaponization of immigration policy to detain and separate families. Consistent with ALAA’s past expressions of unwavering support for Palestinian liberation, we call for Mahmoud and Leqaa’s immediate release, as well as the cessation of all deportation proceedings against them. We also stand in solidarity with student activists and Student Workers of Columbia UAW 2710 (SWC), who are being punished out of retribution for union and Palestine solidarity activities.
NDSU members represent residents of Harlem and the Bronx, many of whom have themselves been targeted by the already vicious criminal and immigration systems. We see our clients in Mahmoud, Leqaa, and their family members, who must now navigate this horrific overreach of state power. We see ourselves in immigrants and union members across the country, repressed for speaking out against the genocide of Palestinians.
The Trump administration has been coalescing its mass deportation campaign with its attacks on pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activism. By detaining these organizers, the administration has made explicit what was already obvious: it will criminalize anyone inconvenient or opposed to its violent, racist agenda. Exercising their First Amendment right to protest against the genocide of their people made Khalil and Kordia a target for arrest, imprisonment, and separation. Given reports that the State Department, Department of Justice, and DHS plan to launch a “Catch and Revoke” AI tool that identifies students who engage in disfavored political activity, many more students will be criminalized. Trump himself said Khalil’s arrest was the first of “many to come.”
NDSU, as a member shop of ALAA, calls for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil, joining over 3.4 million people (as of March 16) who have signed a petition urging the same. We demand that Khalil and Leqaa Kordia be reunited with their families, and the immediate cessation of the government’s egregious efforts to repress speech and deport immigrants. Anyone opposed to this dangerous escalation must join in this demand. The livelihood of two Palestinian students who have been taken and unlawfully detained hangs in the balance. So too do our most fundamental constitutional rights to due process and free speech. The kidnapping and detention of these activists is but one small piece of the U.S. Empire’s increasingly dehumanizing and violent racist and McCarthyist policies.
Demands:
We call on the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem Management to publicly denounce the unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral acts taken against immigrants and protestors by the U.S empire.
We call on NDS Harlem to demand that its neighbor and partner in academia through law clinics and internships/externships – Columbia University – stop cooperating with ICE/DHS far beyond its legal requirements.
We call on the management of other public defense providers in ALAA to speak out against this political violence.
We call on the federal government to end its egregious campaign of anti-immigrant bias and deployment of racist policies like the Alien Enemies Act against Venezuelan immigrants.
