“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — this iconic inscription on the Statue of Liberty has long symbolized our nation’s welcome to all who seek opportunity and freedom on our shores. But today, that promise rings hollow for pro-Palestine students who risk deportation for daring to speak their minds.
President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, which has already included the arrest and detainment of lawful college students, underscores a chilling and fascistic truth: higher education is under attack, and universities like the University of Wisconsin-Madison must publicly stand up for students’ rights, lest the next deportation hit closer to home.
On March 8, U.S. Immigration Enforcement and Customs (ICE) arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident and former graduate student of Columbia University, in his university-owned New York apartment. His arrest came just days after Trump's announcement to cut $400 million in grants and contracts from the university — due to the schools’ “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students” — marking the first time a university has been so openly punished for ideological reasons since Trump’s re-election.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin described Khalil’s arrest as being “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism,” but it is no coincidence that he had also participated in pro-Palestine protests on campus last spring. Trump said his arrest would be the first “of many to come” while his administration targets campus protesters against Israel.
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity,” Trump said in a social media post. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
This authoritarian reaction sends a gravely disturbing message: students who protest in favor of Palestine risk deportation even if they are otherwise in good legal standing.
Columbia University may be the first to feel this blow, but it will likely not be the last. Last spring, student protests in support of Palestine spread to college campuses nationwide, including here at UW-Madison. With Trump escalating a campaign to muzzle university opposition — threatening to strip funding unless institutions eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs — any campus could be next.
And it might be ours. UW-Madison is among 60 colleges and universities that are under investigation in the U.S. Department of Educations’ Office for Civil Rights over complaints of antisemitic discrimination and harassment in response to a wave of complaints filed since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Trump warned they could lose funding if they do not make campuses feel safe for Jewish students according to the department’s standards.
This has created an alarming pattern: Trump pressures universities to align with his ideology and agenda in order to keep their federal funding.
It is in UW-Madison’s Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin’s best interest to be proactive about this matter, speaking out now for the freedom to protest instead of staying silent in the off chance one of our own students are at risk of unlawful arrest and potential deportation. Staying silent and letting Trump hurt pro-Palestine students does not send a signal that the university wants to protect its student body.
In a message to all students, faculty and staff in September, Mnookin said the university will make its voice heard when academic freedom — and higher education as a whole — is threatened.
“If, for example, academic freedom itself were threatened, the university should not stay silent, and similarly, in other instances when the impact on our operations and community is direct, concrete and local, some statement in institutional voice may still be warranted,” Mnookin said in a statement on Sept. 13.
Currently, Mnookin’s silence in the face of injustice does not warrant neutrality, it is simply abandonment. The urgent threat to higher education is here, and Mnookin and UW-Madison leaders have so far abandoned us to the wrong side of history. No student on any college campus should be afraid of exercising their right to freedom of speech and protest for Palestine. The university must speak out in defense of Columbia University protesters and ensure every single UW-Madison student will be protected from ICE if they exercise their First Amendment rights. UW-Madison students will not be pawns in Trump’s game to have universities cave to his outrageous demands of eliminating DEI and restricting protest on campuses.
Students should feel comfortable ,even encouraged, to express their viewpoints — that is built into our university through the Wisconsin Idea that students should take what they learn in classrooms and practice it in the real world.
How are pro-Palestine students expected to practice expressing their opinions in classrooms and on campuses if Trump is going to turn around and slash more funding and programs the second he gets a whisper of something that does not align with his own agenda?
UW-Madison’s deafening silence is loud. The Statue of Liberty’s etched hope of the American dream to uplift the vulnerable can only be promised if institutions like ours are willing to defend it. Speak up UW-Madison.
