First They Came For…
…Mahmoud Khalil, but the Trump administration’s simultaneous crackdown on due process and free speech for legal immigrants clearly won’t stop there. Khalil, a green card holder and former Columbia University grad student who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) more than a week ago, remains incarcerated in Louisiana—despite not having been charged with any crimes.
“The Trump administration possesses neither wisdom nor courage, and it is now in the process of using claims of antisemitism on campus as a justification for grave violations of due process and free speech,” writes David French in The New York Times. French, a former First Amendment litigator, argues that this won’t end with Khalil, and that “just as we rightly look back in shame at the excesses of McCarthyism, we will look back in shame at the excesses of this moment—if we permit anger at campus protests to overwhelm our commitment to due process and free speech.”
The administration maintains that it has the power to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him because he helped lead pro-Palestinian protests. Indeed, it’s becoming clear that Khalil was targeted because of his speech, rather than any other conduct that might be reasonably construed as criminal behavior. “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” an administration official told The Free Press last week. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has outlined a similarly broad view of the government’s powers: “No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card,” he said last week.
True, but green card holders do have rights—and the government does not have the power to detain anyone without due process. That should not be controversial. You might find Khalil’s beliefs distasteful, but the question here is not whether he deserves an award. It’s whether he gets to enjoy the basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Such rights matter because they are not subject to qualification.
In the meantime, read Reason‘s Robby Soave, who says the “detention of a student activist for engaging in what would clearly be considered First Amendment–protected activity under other circumstances is very alarming.”
Meanwhile, the federal government is subjecting other immigrants and permanent residents to inhumane and possibly illegal treatment. Fabian Schmidt, an engineer who has held a green card since 2008, was reportedly detained and brutally interrogated by ICE at Boston’s Logan International Airport. A local NPR station, which spoke with Schmidt’s relatives, reports that the German national was stripped naked, subjected to a cold shower, and not allowed to eat, drink, or sleep. He ended up in the hospital after the ordeal. (Schmidt has a marijuana conviction on his record, but—needless to say—that should in no way justify such treatment.)
Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant doctor at Brown University’s medical school, was deported over the weekend “even though she had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion,” The New York Times reported on Sunday.
And President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act—a law passed in 1798 as part of the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts—to authorize the detention and deportation of anyone suspected of being a part of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan drug gang. Almost immediately, a federal judge blocked enforcement of that executive order. For good reason, since the law requires a declaration of war. (Read more from Ilya Somin on the legal issues with using the Alien Enemies Act against immigrants.)
The Trump administration seems to have defied that judicial order by deporting 250 Venezuelans to El Salvador before the move could be blocked—and then refusing to turn the planes around (and possibly having more take off) after it had been. White House officials told The New York Times th
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