Judge says Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil can't be removed from U.S. as protesters call for his release
Summary
A federal judge blocked the removal of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil from the U.S. after his arrest by ICE.
Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who helped organize pro-Palestinian protests, was arrested Saturday by ICE agents who claimed his visa was revoked for supporting Hamas.
The Trump administration continues to claim he violated an executive order prohibiting anti-Semitism, though no evidence was provided. Protesters in NYC demand his release, calling the arrest unconstitutional.
His location remains unclear. The ACLU and immigrant rights groups argue the detention violates free speech, warning it sets a dangerous precedent.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/demonstrators-take-nycs-federal-plaza-mahmoud-khalil-arrested-ice-rcna195602Open linkView original on lemmy.world573
Comments43
Who wants to be they will deport him anyway? "oopsie, we all make mistakes, right?"
They aren't going to deport him, they ate going to put him in Guantanamo as I believe he does not have the same legal protections there.
I think?
It’s less about legal protections and more about logistical. It’s pretty damn hard for lawyers and the press to visit someone in gitmo.
There are no objective criteria any more. They want him gone, he goes. By the time the court rules it's illegal, he'll already be in Guantanamo.
We need to start arming ourselves and its past time to start putting bullets in ICE agents that come to remove citizens from their homes. How much are we going take? Does he literally need to start gasing the people he has locked up before we get off our ass and fight?
Or are we going go the route that Germany did in 1942?
That's what been claimed, but it's been tyrannical unconstitutional bullshit since 2001.
Well Isreal did... Ironic
Hell they already disappeared him. His fucking lawyer doesn't know where he is at. He most likely already in Getmo and he isn't coming back I'm afraid. Trump going show just how far he can get away with crimes. Hell at this rate we will get consonstration camps before June. Fucking wild how fast fascism is running rampant through our country and not a single politician is doing goddamm thing to stop it.
To be clear, this man could've been lifting "I love Hamas" signs and his arrest would still be unconstitutional. Don't let them make this an "antisemitism" problem.
I have a fake/throwaway account on X and thought I'd check the vibe there. I was shocked how the majority of Trump supporters were arguing that constitutional rights only apply to US citizens.
Their level of confidence in being ignorant is just...wow. Scary.
In addition to ignorance, Khalil had legal citizenship which makes him a US citizen ☠️. So much for “we love immigrants as long as they’re legal”!
As I understand it, he is not a citizen but a legal permanent resident married to a citizen. He has a green card.
Ahhh I see this is a distinction I wasn’t aware of. I just remembered reading one of the publications saying he was a citizen, but it seems you’re correct.
Agree with you ofc, just want to add how ironic it is that supporting Arabs (who are Semites) is antisemitic but nazis who are explicitly anti-Jewish are not..but ofc the fash and doublespeak.
This is an open and shut case: he had his 1st Amendment rights taken away and the ICE agents have violated the Constitution. Therefore, all agents involved must be punished to the letter of the law, no leeway or amnesty. Full stop.
Must? Who's going to make them? Rules and laws alone don't matter, and really never have.
Us. At this point, we have no real choice.
At this point, only democrats with guns can stop MAGA, but they're all unable or unwilling. So fuck them.
I know the answer is no, and to be clear the answer is no, but does that mean you can finally get rid of the literal neo-Nazi movements now?
Antisemitism is only when leftists and brown people.
Unfortunately this is not limited to the US. Israel has employed the same strategy of shaping policies allegedly protecting Jews against antisemitism in that way. In Germany they did the same, where a recent parliament resolution mentioned crticising Israel at the Berlinale 2024 an antisemitic act, while a Neonazi trying to storm into a synagogue and murder Jews on a Jewish holiday a few years back in Halle was not even mentioned.
It is a tool to downplay actual antisemitism, because nazis are often down for the idea of a fascist ethnostate, while it is used to attack leftists and non white people, as those are often opposed to such a state.
There's a very striking historical picture of a Nation of Islam summit in the US (while Malcolm X was still a member), and in the audience, front and center, is the American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell, flanked by two other members with armbands and everything. Rockwell was there because, despite the obvious ideological tensions, both groups ultimately saw common cause on separatism.
Zionism benefits from making Jewish people feel that they are unwelcome outside of the Zionist ethnostate. Nazis want Jewish people to be gone, and them leaving for the Zionist Regime is a realistic and legal option for them. Real antisemitism benefits both these horrible movements.
You've got to check your card.
Literal white supremacists with tiki torches shouting “Jews will not replace us!”? Proud Boys beating people in the streets? Patriot Front marching with Nazi flags?
Definitely not anti-Semitic!
But students calling for the end of apartheid and genocide of an ethnic group being tortured and exterminated on their native land?
Definitely anti-Semitic!
The dude was protesting for human rights. Fuck these assholes.
Fuck the fascist GOP
I agree, but people need to acknowledge that this is a Democratic Party project as well.
It looks like this is probably an open question in the Constitution. The Supreme Court has, in the past, avoided ruling on the matter.
My understanding is that US border control has generally had pretty broad leeway in terms of disallowing people who are not US citizens into the US. There hasn't been a Supreme Court case that has stated that First Amendment protections mean that a non-citizens' speech can be used as grounds for entry or presence in the US.
https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-amendment/
The US Executive Branch effectively prohibits naturalization to Communists, despite the fact that there is First Amendment protection for an American citizen who wants to advocate for such. The way this works is that they ask someone if they've been part of a Communist Party. If so, they can prohibit naturalization. If the answer is "no" --- and not true --- then naturalization can later be revoked as having been obtained on fraudulent grounds.
https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-f-chapter-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yates_v._United_States
SCOTUS has ruled that the Executive Branch may not constitutionally prohibit a citizen who is a member of a Communist party from traveling abroad:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptheker_v._Secretary_of_State
But the question of whether the First Amendment protection applies to speech used as a criteria for non-citizen entry to the US apparently hasn't really been resolved:
https://www.nyclu.org/commentary/column-terrorism-international-border-and-first-amendment-new-york-law-journal
IMO you're overthinking it.
The Constitution applies to all people within jurisdiction of the United States. Immigration or citizenship status isn't a factor; he absolutely has a first amendment right to say what he said.
The question you're struggling with is regarding people who aren't already within the jurisdiction, or are applying for citizenship.
All of that said, if ICE already deported him then that complicates things. Normally somebody who's been deported will be denied reentry for that reason alone; there's a waiting period (5 years iirc) if they're ever going to be allowed back in at all. But you're correct that they could also deny him reentry for his political views. It's likely that, if he's already out of the country, legally removed or not, a judge will have to order him to be allowed reentry despite both of this things.
I don't think that the critical division here is over admissability versus deportability.
https://reason.com/2025/03/10/is-it-constitutional-to-deport-immigrants-for-political-speech/
The issue is that the criteria that the Executive Branch may use for deportation are not fully-defined in the Constitution or (yet) in case law.
Huh. TIL.
I guess this is exactly what the judicial branch was created for. We've got an undefined area of legality, somebody's got to sort it out, and until they do we just can't say for sure one way or the other
Bullshit. If there was an exception to the First Amendment for that, it would've been written into it!
Speech can be used in deciding the fitness for someone to immigrate, but he's a green card holder, so already well past that. There's wide leeway in the criteria for accepting new foreigners, but once you're here legally you have first amendment protections.
No "should" needed. The first amendment doesn't say "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech of citizens", it says shall make no law period.
Constitutional rights are based on personhood, not citizenship. Mahmoud Khalil's 1A rights were violated, plain simple.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8-7-2/ALDE_00001262/
I'm sure that he's not. It's established case law that (a) US citizen cannot be denied entry to the US and (b) that a legitimately-granted citizenship cannot subsequently be constitutionally revoked by the government; revocation must be voluntary. Like, this wouldn't be an argument were it not.
kagis
https://time.com/7266683/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-green-card/
Yeah. If you have a green card, you're on the path to citizenship...but you do not yet have citizenship.
EDIT: WRT my above statement:
SCOTUS ruling that involuntary removal of citizenship is unconstitutional: Afroyim v. Rusk.
His wife is a citizen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Khalil_(activist)
However, SCOTUS has ruled that the right of a US citizen to enter the United States does not extend to a non-citizen spouse:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/supreme-court-says-u-s-citizens-don-t-have-right-to-bring-noncitizen-spouses-to-u-s/ar-BB1oFzGW
No problem. I should add that immigration law is complicated as all hell, and sometimes very unintuitive, and the situation has changed over the years. And I'm not an immigration lawyer, so I'm just giving my best layman's understanding from what past case law and history I've read.
I'd also reiterate that it's not as if SCOTUS has said "the First Amendment doesn't protect the guy" against deportation for his speech. It just hasn't ruled that it does: there's been no ruling to define the scope of the Constitution on the matter that I'm aware of.
I'd also bet that there are a lot of wrinkles there. The rationale that the Executive Branch has used in the past to justify use of speech as a filter for permitting entry to the US is "national security". But I think --- without looking into the matter --- that it's likely difficult to characterize the guy as a threat to US national security. Israel's national security, maybe. But the US's? I think that that's a harder case to make. So...I'm not actually sure that even if SCOTUS takes a case and rules that you can use speech as a criteria for disallowing entry for non-citizens to the US on national security grounds, that it'd agree with the Executive Branch on this guy being deportable.
The meaning of the word “terrorist” has become meaningless after being abused by governments like the US for decades. It’s now just a rhetorical key they turn to justify fascist actions like this arrest.
Reminder: The Bill of Rights (where we get the 1st Amendment) applies to all persons living and residing in the United States. Not just citizens.
Definitely illegal, and definitely a test balloon for what types of executive authority they can get away with.
They chose Khalil specifically because of the subject of his protesting - they might get a handful of judges that allow this abuse because of the near-universal bipartisan support for Israel.
Whether or not this sticks will be an indicator on how far the US slips into fascism, and I'm certainly hopeful this gets reversed quickly.
He is not a citizen. He had a green card which the administration revoked. Green cards cannot be revoked without cause and Khalil did not break a law. They could deport him if he was advocating for an organization that is an enemy of the US (terrorist organizations, enemy nations, etc) or if he committed a felony. Trump did sign an EO basically saying that anti Semitism on campuses is illegal. So the administration will have to prove that his protests were anti Semitic. Unfortunately I could definitely see the courts allowing the administration to interpret their own EO and ignoring the fact that it violates constitutional rights.
Edit: I forgot that there was an EO from Trump's last administration that targeted anti Semitism which changes his outlook. The Supreme Court does everything it can to have narrow rulings despite clear constitutional issues with some executive orders. If it makes it there, I see them supporting deportation.
They’ll just say that being pro-Palestine is the same thing as advocating for HAMAS, revoke his green card, and send him away.
I think they will shoot for the anti Semitism angle. They have already started he was detained due to Trump's EOs. They could more easily argue that rather than having to say being against Palestinian genocide is somehow advocating for Hamas. I anal but that seems like the easier move to me.
Either way, I don't see it ending well for him which is really shitty and shows how much our basic rights are just a shallow façade.
Executive orders can't make things illegal. They're not royal proclamations, they're just guidance to executive agencies.