By REBECCA SANTANA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The arrest of a Palestinian activist who helped organize campus protests of the war in Gaza has sparked questions about whether foreign students and green card holders are protected against being deported from the U.S.

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Mahmoud Khalil was arrested Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Homeland Security officials and President Donald Trump have indicated that the arrest was directly tied to his role in the protests last spring at Columbia University in New York City.

Khalil is being held at an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana, while he awaits immigration court proceedings that could eventually lead to him being deported. His arrest has drawn criticism that he’s being unfairly and unlawfully targeted for his activism while the federal government has essentially described him as a terrorist sympathizer.

A look at what kind of protections foreign students and green card holders have and what might be next for Khalil:

Can someone with a green card be deported?

A green card holder is someone who has lawful permanent residence status in the United States.

Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer is a law professor at Cornell Law School who teaches immigration law. She said lawful permanent residents generally have many protections and “should be the most protected short of a US citizen.”

But that protection isn’t absolute. Green card holders can still be deported for committing certain crimes, failing to notify immigration officials of a change in address or engaging in marriage fraud, for example.

The Department of Homeland Security said Khalil was taken into custody as a result of Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.

Trump has argued that protesters forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls Gaza and has been designated as a terrorist organization.

Khalil and other student leaders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest have rejected claims of antisemitism, saying they are part of a broader anti-war movement that also includes Jewish students and groups. But the protest coalition, at times, has also voiced support for leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Islamist organization designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group.

Experts say that officials seem to indicate with their rhetoric that they are trying to deport Khalil on the grounds that he’s engaging in some sort of terrorist activity or somehow poses a threat.

Khalil has not been convicted of any terrorist-related activity. In fact, he has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

But experts say the federal government has fairly broad authority to arrest and try to deport a green card holder on terrorism grounds.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, green card holders do not need to be convicted of something to be “removable,” Kelley-Widmer said. They could be deported if the secretary of homeland security or the attorney general have reasonable grounds to believe they engaged in, or are likely to engage in, terrorist activities, she said.

But Kelley-Widmer said she’s never seen a case where the alleged terrorist activity happened in the U.S., and she questioned whether taking part in protests as Khalil did qualifies.

What did ICE say about why they were arresting him?

One of the key issues in Khalil’s case is what ICE agents said to his lawyer at the time he was arrested.

His lawyer, Amy Greer, said the agents who took him into custody at his university-owned home near Columbia initially claimed to be acting on a State Department order to revoke his student visa.

But when Greer informed them that Khalil was a permanent resident with a green card, they said they would revoke that documentation instead.

Kelley-Widmer said that exchange raises questions about how familiar the agents who arrested him were with the law or whether there was a “real disregard for the rule of law.”

“I think we should be really concerned that this is happening,” she said.

What are the next steps in his case?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a message posted Sunday on X that the administration will be “revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”

If someone is in the country on a student visa, the State Department does have authority to revoke it if the person violates certain conditions. For example, said Florida immigration attorney John Gihon, it’s quite common for the State Department to cancel visas of foreign students who get arrested for drunk driving.

But when it comes to someone who’s a lawful permanent resident, that generally requires an immigration judge to determine whether they can be deported.

Gihon said the next step is that Khalil would receive charging documents explaining why he’s being detained and why the government wants to remove him, as well as a notice to appear in immigration court.

Generally, he should receive those within 72 hours of being arrested, and then he would make an initial appearance before an immigration judge. That could take from 10 days to a month, Gihon said.

But he cautioned that right now he’s seeing extensive delays across the immigration court system, with clients often moved around the country to different facilities.

“We are having people who are detained and then they’re bounced around to multiple different detention facilities. And then sometimes they’re transferred across the country,” he said.

Khalil’s lawyers have also filed a lawsuit challenging his detention. A federal judge in New York City ordered that Khalil not be deported while the court considered his case. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

By AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials have not determined who was behind an apparent cyberattack on the social media site X that limited access to the platform for thousands of users, according to a Trump administration official familiar with the ongoing investigation into the matter.

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Monday’s outage was described as a cyberattack by the official, who was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter and spoke Tuesday on the condition of anonymity. The official added that the Republican administration takes all cyberattacks against American companies seriously but underscored that the U.S. government had not gleaned any specific intelligence about who might have been behind the attack.

The comments came after Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X and a top adviser to President Donald Trump, claimed in an appearance on Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow” show that the cyberattackers had “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area” without going into detail on what that might mean.

Cybersecurity experts quickly pointed out, however, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that the attack originated in Ukraine.

Musk bought what was then Twitter in 2022 and serves as the CEO of Tesla, all while effectively running Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

His electric vehicle company has faced some headwinds as he’s become the face of Trump’s effort to dramatically shrink the size of the government through DOGE. Its stock plunged 15% on Monday, its biggest one-day loss since September 2020.

Analysts have said Musk’s shift to right-wing politics doesn’t appear to sit well with potential Tesla buyers, generally perceived to be wealthy, environmentally conscious liberals who have turned to electric vehicles in an attempt to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Tesla has also been a target of protests and vandalism in the U.S. and elsewhere over Musk’s push for large-scale federal government layoffs, contract cancellations and other budget slashing moves.

Trump said on his social media platform that he’ll buy a Tesla on Tuesday to demonstrate “confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American.”

“Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???” Trump said.

By Kevin Hardy, Stateline.org

Illinois state Sen. Mark Walker already was working on legislation to bolster the state’s protections for consumers. But now that President Donald Trump has attacked the federal government’s consumer watchdog, Walker said it’s even more important for Illinois to act.

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Walker, a Democrat, sponsored a bill to bolster the state’s existing bank regulator to help fill the void left by weakening of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have targeted for elimination.

Congress created the independent agency in 2010 in response to fallout of the Great Recession, when many people lost their homes, jobs or savings. It takes up individual consumer complaints, aims to protect against unfair banking practices and helps educate consumers. Weeks into Trump’s second term, the administration shuttered the bureau’s office, dropped pending cases against companies and ordered employees to stop work.

“The urgency is much higher now,” Walker said. “They apparently closed the doors and put everyone on leave. And I think it’s become critical now that we figure out exactly what we do to respond to these kinds of issues that consumers in Illinois have.”

Walker says the state attorney general and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation have expertise in enforcing consumer protections. His bill, modeled after a previous successful effort in California, would give more authority to the state regulator to enforce state and federal consumer laws. But Illinois leaders already face a $3.2 billion budget deficit and are bracing for federal cuts to social service funding.

“It’s a matter of where it is on the set of priorities, some of which are a little bit hard to predict,” he said.

Experts say the uncertain future of the federal agency puts more pressure on state attorneys general and state financial regulators. Even though states have broad latitude in enforcing federal financial protections, advocates say they lack the might of the federal regulator. And partisan politics, along with existing budget shortfalls, means consumer enforcements will likely vary widely across the states.

The Trump administration has offered conflicting accounts about its plans for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In a court filing, the White House has said it doesn’t plan to kill the agency. But on Feb. 7, Musk posted an image of a headstone and the epitaph “CFPB RIP” on his social media platform X. Musk has expressed interest in adding a digital payment system to X — a financial product that the CFPB had said before Trump took office that it would regulate. Days after Musk’s post, the administration ordered employees to stop most work and fired dozens.

In the Oval Office on Feb. 10, Trump told reporters he planned to eliminate the bureau, which he said “was set up to destroy some very good people.”

“That was a very important thing to get rid of. And it was also a waste. I mean, number one, it was a bad group of people running it. But it was also a waste.”

Trump’s moves against the CFPB have been challenged in court, by agency employees, advocacy organizations and the city of Baltimore. In February, 23 states and the District of Columbia asked a federal judge in the Baltimore case to issue an injunction blocking the administration from defunding the bureau. Those states argue they will suffer irreparable harm by losing the CFPB’s processing of consumer complaints, data collection and distribution of money to harmed consumers.

‘A national emergency’

Since its inception, the bureau says it has returned more than $21 billion to millions of defrauded American consumers. The agency has helped consumers repair inaccuracies on credit reports, required banks to lower overdraft fees and set limits on credit card late fees.

Just months before the Great Recession began in late 2007, Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law professor at the time, proposed creation of a new federal agency to protect Americans from risky mortgages and overpriced credit products. Now a Democratic U.S. senator representing Massachusetts and a former presidential candidate, Warren said the agency “has been sidelined, but it is not dead.”

At a confirmation hearing, she grilled Jonathan McKernan, Trump’s pick to lead the agency. McKernan, a former member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board, said he would follow and enforce federal consumer laws, but said the agency has of late overreached its authority and is not accountable to Congress or the White House.

Warren questioned how he could effectively operate the agency if Trump wants it killed.

“It kind of feels like you’ve been lined up to be the number one horse at the glue factory,” she said.

During the hearing, news broke that the CFPB had just dropped at least four enforcement lawsuits, including one that accused Capital One of bilking customers out of more than $2 billion in interest.

An analysis by Democratic staff on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs found an 80% drop in the number of consumer complaints the agency directed to companies since Feb. 3, when the Trump administration initiated a stop work order and fired critical staff.

“It’s a national emergency,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said at a forum Warren hosted before the Senate confirmation hearing to discuss weakening of the CFPB.

Campbell, a Democrat, said her office is focused on affordability issues and consumer protections, but she said some states are “stepping away wholeheartedly” from that work.

“It’s not consistent — what we’re doing in Massachusetts — in every single state across the country,” she said. “So you will have elders and veterans and other consumers who are left out without anyone to fight for them on their behalf, with no resources and weapons to fight back.”

Conservative groups such as The Heritage Foundation have criticized not only the reach of the CFPB but also its unique funding mechanism. While other agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission must seek congressional spending approval, the CFPB derives its funding directly from the Federal Reserve system.

At his confirmation hearing, McKernan said the agency needs to be refocused on its mission and made more efficient and more accountable to elected officials.

He said consumers must have a way to redress bad actors in the economy, but also that the billions the agency has returned to consumers is not evidence of its achievement.

“I don’t think we should evaluate the success of the CFPB based on dollar numbers or enforcement count,” McKernan said. “That’s like evaluating an official based on the number of fouls he calls during the game.”

What states can do

Just before Trump took office, the CFPB issued guidance on how states could strengthen their own consumer protections.

In a 34-page document, the agency underscored previous guidance giving states authority to enforce federal rules. And it noted that Congress explicitly gave states power to enact more aggressive local protections — though federal rules take precedence with some regulations regarding national banks.

“Federal law should be a floor, not a ceiling, for the protection of consumers,” the report said.

In December, the nonprofit Consumer Federation of America issued a slate of 10 policy recommendations for state leaders to ensure their residents “enjoy vital protections regardless of changes in federal policy.” Those included banning so-called junk fees, prohibiting the inclusion of medical debt on credit reports and outlawing “bait-and-switch” auto sales practices in which consumers are misled about the full cost, terms or availability of cars.

“They have the power to enforce federal law. Just because federal law is not being enforced in D.C. doesn’t mean it can’t be enforced by states,” said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization.

She said conservative states have traditionally put less emphasis on consumer protection — a partisan divide she expects to see grow as the federal government pulls back.

“States have resource limits as well,” she said. “They can’t be everywhere and can’t cover every issue. So you just tend to have a lot more uneven protection when you’re relying totally on states.”

The National Association of Attorneys General did not respond to questions by publication time. Neither did the office of Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who leads the Republican Attorneys General Association.

Without a strong CFPB, banks and other financial institutions could find themselves wading through disparate state rules and enforcement efforts, said Horacio Mendez, president and CEO of the Woodstock Institute, an Illinois-based nonprofit research and advocacy group focused on fair lending and financial systems.

A former bank executive, Mendez said there are legitimate debates about the structure of CFPB. But he said tearing down the bureau is not in the best interest of consumers or businesses, which can be harmed by the abusive practices of their competitors.

Some banks may eventually pressure the federal government if they start facing various state rules and actions, he said.

“It’s really just putting the burden on states to pick up the slack, and then on national businesses to try to work within this fragmented state-by-state regulatory environment,” Mendez said. “It’s really not efficient. If anything, it actually increases costs and complexity for everybody.”

Blue states worry about resources

Without a federal backstop, Mendez said he’s “all in” on the proposed Illinois legislation to expand the authority of the financial regulators.

“We’ve got to have some cop on the beat.”

Currently, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation is only empowered to enforce specific state rules, said spokesperson Chris Slaby. The department has relied on the federal agency for staff training, information sharing and data collection.

“While IDFPR may be able to shift some priorities, it does not have the staffing or funding to replicate the CFPB,” Slaby said in a statement.

In a statement to Stateline, California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said it had long taken a “complementary” approach to the federal agency’s work.

“However, the sudden gutting of the CFPB leaves no oversight over large, national banks and credit unions, guts oversight of payday lenders, the mortgage markets, and credit reporting agencies — among many others — and rapidly and substantially increases the burden on state agencies to protect consumers,” the statement said.

In 2020, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a dozen bills aimed at boosting consumer protections. The state added more investigators and attorneys and created the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation — characterized as California’s version of the CFPB.

State agency spokesperson Mark Leyes said the department was “steadfast” in its commitments regardless of potential changes in Washington.

But state Sen. Monique Limón, a Democrat who sponsored some of that legislation, said Californians will have one fewer option for lodging complaints if the federal agency is crippled. That will likely increase demand on the state regulator.

And while California has some of the strongest protections and is well positioned to investigate consumer complaints, she said, it does not have the resources to fill the void of the federal agency: “Even if that’s the desire, it can’t.”

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By COREY WILLIAMS

Four people have been charged in the death of a 5-year-old boy who was “incinerated” inside a pressurized oxygen chamber that exploded at a suburban Detroit medical facility, Michigan’s attorney general said Tuesday.

Thomas Cooper from Royal Oak, Michigan, was pronounced dead at the scene on Jan. 31 at the Oxford Center in Troy. His mother was standing next to the chamber and was injured trying to save her boy.

“A single spark it appears ignited into a fully involved fire that claimed Thomas’s life within seconds,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said at a news conference Tuesday.

“Fires inside a hyperbaric chamber are considered a terminal event. Every such fire is almost certainly fatal and this is why many procedures and essential safety practices have been developed to keep a fire from ever occurring,” she said.

The center’s founder and chief executive, Tamela Peterson, 58, is charged with second-degree murder. The facility’s manager Gary Marken, 65, and safety manager Gary Mosteller, 64, are charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. The operator of the chamber when it exploded, Aleta Moffitt, 60, is charged with involuntary manslaughter and intentionally placing false medical information on a medical records chart.

All were arrested Monday pending arraignments Tuesday afternoon in Troy District Court, Nessel said.

Nessel said the defendants unscrupulously put children’s bodies at risk through unaccredited and debunked treatments, simply because it brought cash through the door.

Raymond Cassar, Marken’s attorney, said the second-degree murder charge comes as “a total shock” to him and his client.

“For fairness, he is presumed innocent,” Cassar said. “This was a tragic accident and our thoughts and our prayers go out to the family of this little boy. I want to remind everyone that this was an accident, not an intentional act. We’re going to have to leave this up to the experts to find out what was the cause of this.”

Moffitt’s lawyer, Ellen Michaels, declined to comment before Tuesday’s arraignment. The Associated Press left a telephone message Tuesday morning seeking comment from Peterson’s attorney. An attorney was not listed for Mosteller.

A voicemail was left seeking comment from an attorney representing the Oxford Center. The AP also left a message seeking comment from the center. The Associated Press emailed attorneys representing the family for comment on the charges and did not immediately receive a response.

The Oxford Center had said in an email following the explosion that “the safety and wellbeing of the children we serve is our highest priority.”

“Nothing like this has happened in our more than 15 years of providing this type of therapy. We do not know why or how this happened and will participate in all of the investigations that now need to take place,” the center’s statement said.

Hyperbaric therapy delivers pure oxygen to a person’s body inside the pressurized chamber. That’s up to five times the amount of oxygen in a normal room, Troy Fire Lt. Keith Young said following the explosion.

“The presence of such a high amount of oxygen in a pressurized environment can make it extremely combustible,” Young said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared hyperbaric chambers to be marketed as safe and effective for a list of 13 disorders, such as severe burns, decompression sickness and non-healing wounds. The list doesn’t include many of the other disorders advertised by the Oxford Center.

NBC News reported that according to the family’s attorney, the boy had received multiple sessions of hyperbaric therapy for sleep apnea and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. These conditions aren’t approved by the FDA to be marketed as effectively treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

The FDA also recommends that consumers only use hyperbaric centers that are inspected and accredited by the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society. The Oxford Center doesn’t appear on the society’s February 2025 list of accredited facilities.

Nessel said her office extensively consulted experts on hyperbaric chambers and treatments.

“Horrifying and simple conclusions were reached,” she said. “The Oxford Center routinely operated sensitive and lethally dangerous hyperbaric chambers beyond their expected service lifetime and in complete disregard of vital safety measures and practices considered essential by medical and technical professionals.”