The activist lawyer playbook is well-worn, but we get a case study in legal acrobatics every so often—a perfect example of just how far they’ll go to manipulate the system and shield their radical clients from consequences. Enter Mahmoud Khalil’s attorney, who reportedly demanded by phone to see his arrest warrant before he was taken into custody—a move that was less about legal rights and more about buying time for a friendly judge to intervene.
ICE wasn’t playing along. When Khalil’s lawyer tried to dictate the terms of the arrest, the ICE agent didn’t debate or delay—he just hung up.
Imagine that—law enforcement is doing its job instead of entertaining the latest legal gimmick from an activist lawyer trying to run interference.
Legal Gymnastics: The Lawyer’s Stalling Tactic
Khalil’s legal team did what activist lawyers always do when their client is about to face the consequences: She unsuccessfully tried to stall the arrest with procedural theatrics.
According to his attorney, Amy Greer, she demanded to see a warrant before ICE could detain him—as if law enforcement needed her personal approval to do their job.
‘And the agent said they revoked that too,’ said Greer. The agent hung up when she said she needed to see a warrant before Khalil could be detained, according to Greer.
This is not how the legal system works—and Greer knows it. She wasn’t speaking to a judge or agency counsel; she was speaking to a law enforcement officer executing an arrest. ICE agents don’t debate arrests over the phone with activist attorneys. Their job is to enforce the law, not entertain real-time legal challenges from lawyers hoping to create a procedural roadblock.
If Greer had an actual legal argument, she knew the proper place: in a courtroom, not an ICE agent’s ear. But, of course, she didn’t want a legal battle—she wanted a delay. Had the agent indulged her, she would have rushed to a sympathetic judge, filed an emergency motion, and gummed up the works long enough for the media to rebrand Khalil as a political prisoner and potentially stop Khalil’s detention in its tracks.
Instead, ICE did what every federal agency should take notes on—they hung up and went about their business.
Delay, Delay, Delay
This wasn’t some good-faith request for procedural transparency. In the world of activist lawfare, delay is everything. Every extra hour, every frivolous motion, every all-caps Twitter meltdown about “fascism”—it’s all part of the activist lawfare strategy: stall, obstruct, and shield radicals from facing the consequences.
But ICE stuck to the mission, picked Khalil up, and sent him to Louisiana—at least for now. No judicial order precluding his detention, no street-clogging campus protests stopping enforcement—this time, at least initially, the system worked as it should.
Yet, thanks to an activist judge, his next stop might be a New Jersey courtroom.
Attorneys Don’t Get to Preempt Arrest Warrants
Khalil’s lawyer acted like law enforcement needed her permission to enforce an arrest warrant. Spoiler alert: They don’t.
An arrest warrant is for law enforcement to execute, not for an attorney to review and challenge in real-time.
If she wanted to contest it? Fine. That happens after the fact, in court, not before the arrest, not as some stall tactic, and certainly not as a way to game the system. Criminal defense attorneys don’t get to referee law enforcement in real time.
Industrial Scale Obstruction of Enforcement
Left-wing activist attorneys have turned obstruction into an industrial-scale operation. Their playbook is simple: bury every deportation in legal clutter—delaying motions, media tantrums, last-minute courtroom theatrics—until the system collapses under its own weight or is effectively paralyzed until they can win the next election.
We’ve seen it time and again:
- Judges issuing last-minute orders to block deportations after ICE has already executed a warrant.
- Sanctuary cities stonewalling federal immigration authorities, giving radicals months of lead time to vanish.
- Well-funded legal groups are launching media blitzes and whipping up outrage to pressure courts and bureaucrats into submission.
This is lawfare in its purest form—not law as a path to justice, but as a weapon against the law itself.
As a lawyer, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that many attorneys are simply doing their job, zealously advocating for their clients, as they should. But this is something else entirely. This isn’t zealous advocacy, though—it’s gaming the system to shield radical activists from enforcement of laws that are nearly as old as the Constitution.
Moreover, the level of orchestration here is becoming impossible to ignore. We’re seeing habeas corpus turned into a procedural battering ram—not to contest illegal detention, but to drag cases into federal court where activist judges can meddle in immigration enforcement.
But that’s a conversation for another day.
ICE Didn’t Blink—And That’s a Good Thing
For once, a federal agency refused to play defense. Khalil was picked up, detained, and shipped off to Louisiana before his legal team could turn his arrest into a circus. Still, the show must go on—but the headliner is now performing exclusively for an audience of ICE agents, fellow detainees, and a legal defense team working overtime to spin him into a martyr.
And just like that, one of Columbia’s most notorious agitators is no longer a campus problem.
Memo to law enforcement: Do your job. Hang up the phone. Let the activist lawyers rage on MSNBC while you enforce the law.
Charlton Allen is an attorney, former chief executive officer, and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is the founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and the host of the Modern Federalist podcast. X: @CharltonAllenNC
image, Pixabay license.
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