Rep. Ro Khanna is demanding that President Trump order U.S. marshals to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in Washington next week, a move the president has already flatly rejected.
Khanna, a California Democrat openly weighing a 2028 presidential bid, made the demand Friday in a Capitol Hill hallway interview with MeidasTouch reporter Pablo Manriquez. He invoked the International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued against Netanyahu in 2024, which accused the Israeli leader of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to Israel's military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Khanna also named Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faces his own ICC warrant, as someone the president should detain on American soil.
The call lands days before Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in Washington for a meeting with Trump, their first face-to-face discussion since the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in late February, and to attend the funeral of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a longtime ally of Israel. It also follows weeks of escalating rhetoric from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who first floated directing the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu over the ICC warrant ahead of the Israeli prime minister's expected visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly this fall.
Khanna left no room for ambiguity in his Friday remarks. The Hill reported his full statement to the MeidasTouch interviewer:
"The American president should arrest Netanyahu or [Russian President Vladimir] Putin in accordance with international law. Full stop. America needs to cooperate with the ICC. It's a matter of human rights, and it's a matter of a rules-based international order and he should order the marshals to arrest someone if they come to our jurisdiction."
He went further, accusing the president of failing to uphold international standards.
"He's not a law-and-order president, and he doesn't really care about human rights or international law. It's embarrassing to the United States and to the world community... It's simple international law."
And he framed the demand in moral terms, telling the reporter:
"This is about accountability. You can't just kill women and children, have an ICC arrest warrant, and then walk into the United States of America and think nothing is gonna happen to you. If you come to our jurisdiction, America is a country that's gonna enforce international law."
That last line, "America is a country that's gonna enforce international law", is a bold assertion from a congressman whose own government has never joined the ICC. The United States is not a member state of the court. No sitting president, Republican or Democrat, has ever ordered the arrest of a visiting foreign head of state on the basis of an ICC warrant. Khanna's demand treats a legal framework the U.S. has deliberately stayed outside of as though it were binding domestic obligation.
Khanna's rhetoric echoes a campaign Mamdani launched earlier in the week. The New York City mayor, an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights who has called Israel's actions in Gaza a "genocide," told The New York Times last week that he was in active conversation with city law enforcement about whether he could arrest Netanyahu during the prime minister's expected fall visit for the UN General Assembly.
In a video shared on social media earlier this week, Mamdani doubled down:
"As I've said, I agree with the ICC that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and tried for his crimes, as I do for anyone else charged by the ICC."
But the proposal ran into an immediate and obvious problem. Mamdani later admitted he does not have the legal authority to arrest a foreign head of state. Federal law governs foreign policy, and any government official visiting the United Nations is protected by diplomatic immunity. Mamdani's administration said it had "examined all legal options for arrest", and found none within its reach. He pivoted to demanding that federal authorities act instead.
That pivot is the bridge between Mamdani's stunt and Khanna's demand. Once the mayor conceded that only Washington could enforce an ICC warrant against a sitting head of state, the pressure moved to Congress and the White House. Khanna picked up the baton.
President Trump had already answered the question before Khanna posed it. On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social:
"Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America. He is fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recently killed 52,000 innocent protestors, and has spent the last 47 years killing American Soldiers, and others."
That statement was a direct response to Mamdani's calls. It left zero daylight between the White House and Netanyahu on the question of arrest. Trump's rebuke of Mamdani made the administration's position unambiguous: the ICC warrant will not be enforced on American soil.
Khanna's response to that position was to call Trump an embarrassment to the world community. Coming from a congressman who is openly exploring a presidential run, the language reads less like a legal argument and more like a campaign audition, one aimed squarely at the progressive base that has made opposition to Israel's military operations a litmus test.
Khanna's posture on Israel has sharpened in recent weeks. He said he was briefly detained by Israeli settlers and IDF soldiers during a visit to a small Palestinian village in the West Bank. After the incident, he told The New York Times in a July 11 interview:
"Free advice to the Israelis: It's not a good idea to detain long-shot presidential candidates. Not how you're going to build good will with the next American president, whoever that is."
That quote frames the detention as a personal affront with political consequences, and frames Khanna himself as a future president. The remark was playful in tone but pointed in implication: cross me now, and there may be a cost later.
Whether the detention genuinely radicalized Khanna's position or simply gave him a personal narrative to wrap around an existing political calculation is an open question. What is clear is that his rhetoric has moved from criticism of Israeli policy to calling for the arrest of Israel's sitting prime minister on American soil.
The fundamental problem with Khanna's demand, the same problem that sank Mamdani's proposal, is jurisdiction. The United States has never ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC. American law does not recognize ICC warrants as enforceable on U.S. soil. No mechanism exists within federal law for a president to order U.S. marshals to arrest a visiting head of state based on an international court's warrant that the United States has not agreed to honor.
The Washington Examiner noted that any government official visiting the United Nations is protected by absolute head-of-state diplomatic immunity, and that federal law, not local officials, dictates foreign policy. The Trump administration has also accused leading critics of Netanyahu, including Mamdani, of antisemitism, pointing to the mayor's refusal to disavow the phrase "globalize the intifada" and his support for the BDS movement targeting Israel.
Khanna's call for the president to "order the marshals" treats a legal impossibility as a simple act of political will. It is not. Even if a future president wanted to enforce an ICC warrant, doing so would require Congress to pass new legislation recognizing the court's jurisdiction, a step no Congress has ever taken and no serious legislative effort has pursued.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have demanded a DOJ probe of the Mamdani administration over separate controversies, including a planned meeting with an Iranian ambassador, a sign that the political backlash against this strain of progressive foreign-policy activism is building on Capitol Hill, not receding.
None of this will prevent Netanyahu's visit. The Israeli prime minister is scheduled to arrive in Washington next week for his meeting with Trump and Graham's funeral. His expected fall trip to New York for the UN General Assembly remains on the calendar as well. Trump has guaranteed his safety from arrest. Federal law supports that guarantee. No federal authority has indicated any intention to enforce the ICC warrant.
Khanna and Mamdani are making demands they know cannot be fulfilled under current law, by an administration they know will refuse. The calls serve a political purpose, signaling to progressive voters and pro-Palestinian constituencies, but they do not serve a legal one. They invoke "international law" as though the phrase alone creates an obligation, while ignoring that the United States has spent decades deliberately declining that particular obligation.
When elected officials demand arrests they have no power to make, under laws their own country has never adopted, the word for that is not accountability. It is theater.
