When Speech Gets You Deported: The Case of Mahmoud Khalil

In a shocking turn of events, Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the U. S. , was arrested at his New York home last Saturday. The Trump administration didn't charge him with a crime. Instead, they targeted him for his leadership in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. They claimed they had the legal authority to expel him based on his participation in First Amendment-protected speech. They whisked him off to a notorious immigrant detention center in Louisiana. His lawyers are fighting his removal. Khalil holds a green card and is married to an American citizen. Yet, the administration asserted that it had the legal authority to expel him on the basis of his participation in First Amendment-protected speech, without even the pretense of due process. This is a disturbing precedent. It sets a dangerous example for all our civil liberties. The administration cited an old law from the second Red Scare. The law says, "an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable. " Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that he thinks that Khalil’s free speech would have adverse foreign policy consequences, so Khalil must be deported.

This law was enacted in a very different time, the second Red Scare, when there were much fewer civil liberties guaranteed to everyone, including immigrants. A lot of legal reasoning from that period has been totally discredited. And so I hope that the courts will step in and do the right thing. The administration moved Khalil to Louisiana. This was a deliberate move. It was so that Judge Jesse Furman would not have jurisdiction over the case. This is a dark place to be. The administration is coming for all of us. The First Amendment doesn’t distinguish between citizens and noncitizens, or lawful permanent residents and everyone else. So the idea that your green card is subject to revocation because of something you said is really hard to square with the constitutional text. The administration is using old, discredited statutes and using them to say: "Oh, we don’t need to do due process at all. We don’t need to give notice and the ability to be heard. You’re done. " This is a really grim day for the rule of law.

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