We ask Rep. Jimmy Panetta to intervene to secure the release of Palestinian Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. permanent resident, after his illegal arrest and imprisonment by the Department of Homeland Security.

Khalil is a Columbia University graduate student and son of Palestinian parents. He was a key negotiator between students and the university during campus protests against genocide in Gaza. Khalil has completed a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Khalil was arrested March 8 in front of his New York apartment, with no warrant. His wife, a U.S. citizen, and 8 months pregnant, showed. Khalil’s U.S. Green Card to the DHS officers. Khalil is incarcerated in a Louisiana DHS prison because of his political views until March 27, by an order from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The United States government is threatening universities, professors, teachers, and students with authoritarian punishments, in defense of a right wing foreign government and its illegal military occupation. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told the New York Times, “We cannot allow this nation to slide into a system of presidential authoritarianism, where people are seized at their homes, arrested and detained simply for expressing political viewpoints.” Raskin said the detention of Khalil “sets an extremely dangerous and chilling precedent from an administration that is hellbent on wielding fear and intimidation as weapons to crush political dissent.”

Every elected official and every person should defend the lives and human rights of every person in this country, and elected officials of all parties should stand up and defend universities and students. Freedom of speech, academic freedom, and justice for all are the values that U.S. elected officials should be committed to.

For too long Panetta has justified U.S. funding of Israel as a “right to defend itself,” when, in fact, the rights of people to life, liberty, security, and self-governance exceed the rights of any government. Years of unconditional funding of Israel by Democratic and Republican parties created the conditions where now Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have free reign to wage mass murder and ethnic cleansing against Palestinian people, with no restraints.

Palestinian human rights attorney and Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat warns that colonial violence abroad reverberates with repression and violence at home. The war against Palestinians is being waged in the United States.

Trump said, “We will find, apprehend, and deport” students who advocate Palestinian liberation. He began to do just that by arresting Khalil in New York City.

We ask Panetta to speak this truth: Support for Palestinian liberation is not antisemitism. It is the Israeli government that defines itself as the keeper of Jewish identity and claims it can define antisemitism as criticism of its illegal occupation and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

This is a lie. It is the Israeli government that targets people by ethnic identity. The Israeli government imprisons thousands of Palestinians, takes Palestinian land and drinking water, contains Palestinians with concrete walls and military checkpoints, kills 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and violates international law to eliminate Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

In truth, advocates for Palestinian liberation say again and again, we seek a liberation in which everyone, Jews and Palestinians, live in freedom and equality. As Yuval Abraham, the Israeli filmmaker of “No Other Land” declared at the Oscars, “Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people are safe only when Basel’s people are free?”

Please tell us Mr. Panetta, what are you doing to protect Palestinians in your district, in this country, and in the West Bank and Gaza from harm by the United States government, the Israeli government, and anti-Palestinian activists?

Marcia Heath, Karl Schaffer and Peter Klotz-Chamberlin are Santa Cruz County residents and members of Panetta Vigil for Palestinian Human Rights.