New York, New York – Israel’s war in Gaza is personal for Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil.
Khalil, a 29-year-old Palestinian refugee raised in Syria, wanted to get involved in campus activism against the war, but he was nervous.
Khalil faced a dilemma common to international students: He was in the United States on an F-1 student visa. His ability to remain in the country depended on his continued enrollment as a full-time student.
But participating in a protest — including the camp that broke out on Columbia’s lawn last month — meant risking suspension and other punishments that could jeopardize his enrollment status.
“From the beginning, I decided to stay out of the public eye and media attention or high-risk activities,” Khalil said. “I considered the camp ‘high risk’.”
Instead, he chose to be the lead negotiator for Columbia University’s Apartheid Divest, a student group pressing school administrators to sever ties with Israel and groups involved in abuses against Palestinians.
“I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to defend the rights of the Palestinians, the people who are being killed in Palestine,” said Khalil, calling his advocacy work “literally the least I could do.”
Khalil explained that he worked closely with the university to ensure that his activities did not cause him any problems. Based on his conversations with school leaders, he felt it was unlikely he would be punished.
Still, on April 30, Khalil received an email from Colombia administrators saying he had been suspended, citing his alleged participation in the camp.
“I was shocked,” Khalil said. “It was ridiculous that they suspended the negotiator.”
Legal risk
However, a day later – before Khalil could even appeal the decision – the university sent him an email informing him that his suspension had been lifted.
“After reviewing our records and reviewing the evidence with Columbia University Public Safety, it was determined to rescind your interim suspension,” the short, three-sentence email read.
Khalil said he even received a call from the Columbia University president’s office apologizing for the error.
But legal experts and civil rights advocates warn that even temporary suspensions can have serious consequences for students who rely on educational visas to stay in the country.
Naz Ahmad, co-founder of the Creating Accountability and Accountability in Law Enforcement project at CUNY School of Law, told Al Jazeera that when a student visa holder is no longer enrolled full-time, the university is required to report the student to the Department of Homeland Security within 21 days.
This department oversees the US government’s immigration services. Students must then make plans to leave – or risk eventual deportation proceedings.
“If they don’t leave immediately, they will start to accumulate illegal presence,” Ahmad said. “And it may affect your ability to reapply for other benefits in the future.”
Ann Block, senior lawyer at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told Al Jazeera that most schools have a designated employee to monitor the status of international students.
“They are usually international student counselors and they are the ones who help people get into school, initially get their visas to come to school from abroad and typically help advise them,” Block explained.
Even outside an academic context, non-citizens face the possibility of increased consequences if they choose to protest.
While noncitizens enjoy many of the same civil rights as U.S. citizens — including the right to free speech — experts say laws like the Patriot Act can limit how these protections apply.
Passed after the 9/11 attacks, the Patriot Act includes broad language that could be used to interpret protests as “terrorist” activity, according to civil rights lawyer and New York University professor Elizabeth OuYang.
And the law authorizes the government to restrict immigration to anyone involved in such activity, she added.
“Section 411 of the Patriot Act prohibits entry to noncitizens who have used their ‘prominent position with any person in any country to endorse or advocate terrorist activities,’” OuYang said.
“And what constitutes terrorist activity? And that’s where the United States Secretary of State has broad discretion to interpret that.”
Avoiding the front lines
The heightened level of scrutiny surrounding campus protests has heightened fears that such consequences could be invoked.
After all, criticism of Israel is a sensitive issue in the US, the country’s longtime ally.
Although a study released in May indicated that 97 percent While protests on U.S. campuses were peaceful, politicians on both sides of the aisle continued to raise fears of violence and anti-Semitic hatred.
Last week, Republican Representative Andy Ogles presented one account called the Study Abroad Act that would take away student visas “for unlawful riots or protests and for other purposes.”
He cited the recent wave of campus protests as motivation for sponsoring the legislation and compared the protesters to terrorists.
“Many elite American universities have damaged their hard-earned reputations by opening their doors to impressionable terrorist sympathizers,” Ogles told The Daily Caller, a right-wing website.
Some international students who spoke to Al Jazeera said the charged political atmosphere had forced them to avoid protests altogether.
“As international students, we cannot risk being caught on the spot,” said a student journalist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Another student added that he doesn’t even feel comfortable reporting live on the protests for UCLA Radio, the student station where he works.
Other students explained that they played peripheral roles in the protests, offering supplies and services rather than manning camps and clashing with police.
An undocumented Columbia University student originally from Mexico said she joined a supply “platoon” to help distribute materials and move tents. She asked to be identified only by her first initial, A.
“None of this means no risk,” she said. “I feel like I can find a way out. But I’m not necessarily going to put myself in front of a police officer.”
On April 29, student organizers at Columbia even warned their classmates via bullhorns to leave the camp if they were attending school on a visa, for fear of suspensions. A, the undocumented student, said her parents also encouraged her not to participate in the protest.
“It’s so hard to be a bystander when it would go against my beliefs,” she explained. “I can’t watch children die.”
A frightening effect
A Columbia student from South Africa, who requested anonymity out of concern for her immigration status, said it was, in fact, the American tradition of campus activism that attracted her to the school.
“I came here knowing there were protests against apartheid in South Africa. There were protests in 1968 about Vietnam, about Harlem,” she said.
But after facing disciplinary warnings for her activism this year, she explained that she needed to step back.
“The combination of xenophobia and extreme surveillance makes the way I decide to participate in this movement different than if I were a citizen,” she said.
The police crackdown on campus protests also had a chilling effect, several international students told Al Jazeera.
Estimates put the number of protesters arrested on campus over the past month above 2,000. Only this Thursday, 47 people at the University of California, Irvine, were taken into custody, according to campus officials.
Olya, a Columbia graduate student from Thailand, was among those who attended the camp at her school in the early days. She gave Al Jazeera only her first name, also citing immigration concerns.
But when school administrators set a deadline for protesters to disperse or face suspension, Olya decided she had reached her limit.
“That’s when I stopped going to camp more often because it made me realize that you don’t really know what the administrator is going to do,” Olya said.
“I think my fear of being arrested overshadows my interest in advocacy and activism in general. Especially in this country.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
