If you hold a green card and support an organization which has been deemed a terrorist organization by the US government, you are taking a giant risk and are quite likely to be deported (legally). Section 237 of INA explicitly calls it out.
Most green card holders will tell you they feel like a guest in the country. Getting involved in protests and supporting organizations on the terror list etc seems rather silly...
This is relevant if they can show that he was deemed to be supporting a terrorist organization, which of course would require him to show up in court and would require the government to defend their decision. They have done neither, and have instead moved him over 1000 miles from his lawyers without telling them
- massive citation needed on the 'this person organized protests where people got hurt'. Here is a pro-israel group that explicitly tracks antisemitic behavior, and all they have on the guy is that they don't like his speech: https://canarymission.org/individual/Mahmoud_Khalil
- greencard holders have very strong legal protections, including (of course) first amendment protections (see: https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/after-we-grant-your-green-c... -- "Be protected by all laws of the United States, your state of residence and local jurisdictions"). Those first amendment protections would mean nothing if USGov could just deport anyone whose speech they do not like without trial.
The problem, of course, is the 'detained/deported without trial' bit. You can claim whatever you want about what is or isn't true, but we can't ever adjudicate the question if it doesn't go to a court, which this admin seems to be trying to avoid. Specifically, if it turns out that he did NOT ever indicate support for any terrorist organizations (as determined by the courts), he would be free and clear even under your (imo ridiculous) standards, and this whole thing is a straightforward case of an authoritarian government compelling speech. Something that I'd hope the HN crowd is particularly sensitive to.
They aren't claiming he committed a crime. There will be no trial in a criminal court. The immigration court is a part of the administrative branch (it's part of homeland security).
Being protected by the laws doesn't much help here - the law says he is a deportable alien if he has supported a terrorist group. There is various case law on what is and is not protected under the first amendment, but there isn't just a free pass to say whatever you want.
The case is quite straightforward indeed - if he did support a terrorist group (and I have no insight on what he actually did), he will be almost certainly be deported.
Do you have a citation for anything linking him to actual violence? Permanent residents are protected by U.S. laws, including the 1st amendment, so simply protesting shouldn’t be enough unless they can show a serious crime.
Yes (the link is that he gave interviews at the encampments where that happened), but it doesn't even matter what he actually did. If you really want to, yes, you can find videos of him defending the violence. It's not hard to find on Youtube. I don't think I could find video where he, personally, commits violence.
But it doesn't matter.
Visas can be granted or withdrawn at the president's discretion. You're absolutely right that visa holders are protected by US laws ... but that doesn't protect them from losing said visa.
Deportation is also at the president's discretion. So the same applies.
But they are definitely protected by US laws. You cannot kill a them. You will get arrested for stealing from them. Even if they're being deported. But the executive ("the president"), ie. ICE, can forcibly remove any visa holder, from US soil, that is perfectly within the law.
> Yes (the link is that he gave interviews at the encampments where that happened), but it doesn't even matter what he actually did
In other words, no, you don’t. Talking to reporters is covered by the first amendment. Talking to school officials is covered by the first amendment. Being at a protest is covered by the first amendment. Simply at protest where other people do something illegal is covered by the first amendment, too. Unless there’s evidence that he was personally doing or inciting illegal activity, this should be textbook civil rights law.
> Green cards can be granted or withdrawn at the president's discretion.
> Unless there’s evidence that he was personally doing or inciting illegal activity ...
I bet any decent prosecutor can make the case that organizing (and defending) a protest that engages in violence is illegal, including when the organizer cannot be proven to directly participate in the violence.
And, frankly, (my personal moral opinion) that is just not OK to do. If this happens, you walk away. If you don't, there may be consequences.
But if you want to shout that there is no direct proof of this person directly committing violence, well, no, there isn't. Al Capone famously also never hurt a fly (or at least, never convicted for that), in the same manner: he organized violence against people, he did not do it himself.
> Can you provide a citation to that law?
Again, this will be subtle, so if you want to shout "so you CAN'T" again, you'll probably be able to. You will not get any response beyond that. Specifically what is not addressed in my response is the conflict between Federal law and States' law. But here you go:
TLDR: the secretary of state (and thus the president) can request that a visa be revoked, and that's that. He is not limited in that. Here is the secretary of state announcing his intention to do just that:
> I bet any decent prosecutor can make the case that organizing (and defending) a protest that engages in violence is illegal, including when the organizer cannot be proven to directly participate in the violence.
Let them make case rather than contributing your credibility pro bono. That’s why we have courts, and also I feel compelled to note that the courts have tossed out tons and tons of those cases as prosecutorial overreach. Speculation without evidence isn’t going to matter in a fair court, and if we’re at the point where the courts no longer care about laws or evidence I doubt you’d want to be helping them.
If you look at past protests, there’s a pattern where the police arrest many people but ultimately only a few even face trials because even if something is unambiguously illegal like chucking a brick through a window or starting a fire, it’s hard to prove that anyone who isn’t right there approved or helped commit the crime. Going to a protest, joining a chant, waving a sign, or speaking up on behalf of the protest movement doesn’t mean you support violence unless you were specifically calling for violence. None of the links you shared showed him shouting for genocide and even the people who’ve been branding him as anti-Semitic rely on vague, sweeping claims which mostly seem to imply guilt by association. It’s always possible that a trial will show stronger evidence but I think almost all of the reaction here is that there absolutely should be a trial.
I get where you're coming from, but defending this particular guy also offends me. When Trump apprehends someone for, say, protesting Tesla, I'll climb on the barricades.
IIRC a Jewish billionaire funded a van which drove around campuses doxxing students who had little or nothing to do with the protests. He also sent lists of those students to potential employers.
for your sanity stop replying to invalidname, that dude is in every single Israel / Palestine post, with non-stop commenting. I think he's (she's?) paid to astro-turf here. Just look at their history, and then look at mine for a convo that I have had with them in the past.
Looks like the article is describing a poorly-considered letter, not protests. And in any case, it seems irrelevant to the protests Mahmoud Khalil was part of.
I take offense at the idea that an anti-war and/or anti-genocide protest would necessarily¹ be "100% pro Hamas," since you could make the same argument about any similar protest with a drastic imbalance of power: pro-Ukraine, anti-Vietnam-War, etc. What I'm hearing is "stop struggling, you'll only make it worse" as dozens of Palestinian civilians are blown up for each murdered Israeli. The only way not to care is if you've dehumanized these people completely.
Wherever you get your notions from, they are certainly not coming from "logical people."
¹ (Which is not to discount that there were some anti-semitic and pro-Hamas protesters as well. My sense is that they were far from the majority.)
And if you want to have a fight about technicalities, you're both wrong. He didn't describe himself as either pro-Hamas or pro-Palestinian. He described the protests as anti-Israel ...
As anti-Israel's existence, to be exact, not anti-Israel's actions in Gaza or anywhere else.
That's what the last paragraph is about. You're technically right. He spoke out against Israel's right to exist. That's functionally the same, or even worse, but not exactly identical to what you mention. You pick.
In the five links you provided, there is nothing supporting that he spoke out against Israel's right to exist or that he described the protests as anti-Israel. Can you provide anything that supports your statements?
but you say yourself you don't know what the facts are. Deriding the guy as 'rather silly' is basically accepting the claims by ICE at face value and judging him accordingly. It seems like it would be smarter to gather or wait for facts before drawing a conclusion.
It was written because most people here seem to be confused about the law - ie they think even if someone did what they say they are somehow protected. They are not. No one was derided because it was a hypothetical
Legal cases are often considered in this fashion - assume the accusation is correct on the facts about a hypothetical person - what is the law? Else you waste a lot of time and money figuring if someone did something only to realize "ok he did that, but as it happens, that's totally fine!". Once you are certain the claim is actually problematic, then you turn to the facts - did the person in question do it?
If it’s true that they can most deport anyone at their discretion, why does the actual have a long list of specific reasons, most of which are felonies or other crimes which would normally carry long jail sentences?
This is not the correct law. I think this is a law where congress is trying to force the US attorney general (and with them the states' attorneys general) to immediately rescind a visa and deport individuals in certain cases, such as the named felonies.
A lot such laws exist, because there has been a long fight between the federal government and various states about deportation (and of course, it's not just federal vs states, there's also states that want people in other states to get deported, e.g. New York vs Texas)
Can you point me to the law you believe covers this? All of the coverage I’ve read says otherwise and that includes older discussions from Trump’s first term. Everything says some kind of serious crime - felony, support for terrorism, etc. – or something like marriage fraud or other problems with his actual immigration application.
That’s specific to non-immigrant visas - students, diplomats, business travelers, etc. where the visa is time-limited and linked to a particular purpose such as being an employee of an American business or teaching at a college. The best known example on HN is the H1-B visa but there are quite a few others:
As a green card holder, he was covered on the other type (immigrant) which does not assume that you’re intending to leave the country. I don’t know anything about his personal life but as the spouse of an American citizen he should easily have qualified:
The key thing which separates a green card from a regular visa of either type, and why people tried so hard to get them, is that it offers legal rights such as the ability to sponsor family members for their own permanente residency and, most relevant, legal protections closer to a citizen’s.
They probably invoked very particular section of the law which gives a power to the US Secretary of State to take green card in extraordinary circumstances of danger to the states.
The provisions you keep citing most likely can’t be invoked like this, and must involve immigration courts. It’s much harder for the state to remove permanent residents than visa holders.
They showed up at first saying they were revoking his student visa, were surprised he didn't have a student visa and was here because he is a permanent resident, and then they made a bunch of stuff to justify hauling him away to imprison him in Louisiana.
For those who aren't familiar, habeas corpus is an incredibly important civil right that effectively allows anyone who is detained to go to court to challenge the detention. Khalil's lawyers state that after they filed for habeas corpus, ICE moved Khalil to Lousiana without telling anyone. Extremely concerning.
>Last week it was reported by Axios that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intends to revoke visas from foreign nationals who are deemed to support Hamas or other terrorist groups, using artificial intelligence (AI) to pick out individuals [on social media]
Yikes. Once the government has built that infrastructure and pipeline from monitoring to arrest, you think they won't use it for other kinds of dissent?
> Why, isn't using it for this kind of dissent already enough?
We don’t know if he materially supported Hamas. At that point it’s no longer just a speech issue.
We will eventually know the government is full of bunk. But that takes time. In the meantime, I think all we can do is note who is jumping to conclusions with incomplete information and who is prescient about objective facts (not forecasts).
Very relevant in a court of law. Not really so in public opinion. I’m not saying we can conclude he deserves any of this, nor that it’s legal. I’m just saying we can’t conclude what happened was illegal without knowing the charges and evidence.
I was a non-citizen for years and felt I should hold myself to stricter conduct standards - not just for legal reasons but also moral ones. You don't ask to come into someones house and then complain about the cooking or start giving unsolicited advice on interior decorating.
How we can we help him get proper legal help and awareness on a regular basis? Is HN beyond sticky threads? Seems like society in general is, but ... we need sticky threads at this point.
We could assess whether there are any big organizations separate to Hn and engaged on this issue already that could do with support, instead of needlessly duplicating their efforts.
My understanding of the relevant law and legal precedent is that since revoking a green card and deporting someone is not technically a criminal penalty, it may be constitutional for the government to so. Reno vs AADC went to SCOTUS in 1999, and that was roughly the ruling, although it's unclear how much of a precedent that sets, because the lower court's ruling was rejected due to lack of jurisdiction.
Even if that is considered settled (which, personally, I find a pretty lousy interpretation of the first amendment), it would still make this arrest and detention totally illegal, at least warranting a lawsuit, even if deportation can't be avoided.
Hopefully I'm wrong. This whole thing is so destructive to the constitution, to personal liberties, and to higher education.
Since the administration specifically brought up "Department of State" as one of the entities that helped with the effort, my guess is the action is founded on this specific statue, not the "terrorist support" piece in particular, despite the latter being the widespread speculation:
8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(3)(C)(i) "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"
This provision basically lets Secretary of State to deport any alien he deems in the future might post a threat to foreign policy. It does not appear to be a difficult standard to justify either and gives Secretary of State broad leeways in deportation of all aliens, including LPRs. That said, I am not sure it even technically constitutes "revocation" of green card. They seem to be able to simply deport you with a green card without needing the procedural burden of revocation.
All the other provisions outlined for cancelation seem to involve DHS (incl. USCIS) and Attorney General to cancels one's green card, and would not really be in purview of Dept. of State.
The statue talks about Foreign Policy, not foreign relations. Foreign Policy is set by the executive branch, so almost by definition he cannot be against his own foreign policy.
It could be a President's foreign policy to sever ties with some allies, for example, if it is in the benefit of the American people as he sees it.
To be very clear, we do live in a world where the distinction between legal and illegal, right and wrong, matters. And we will always live in that world.
Not to pick a fight with you. It obviously does not matter to the people running this administration, I agree with you.
All societies exist on a "law" to "rule" spectrum, what determines whether you have law or rule is who the final arbiters of justice are.
If citizens themselves are the final arbiters of justice, you ironically live in a law based society. If those with power are the final arbiters of justice, then you live in a society with rules, not laws.
The absence of law is rule by those who are most powerful. The explicit purpose of law is to prevent arbitrary wielding of power.
With this understanding he's correct, because law is an entirely self fulfilling prophecy. If GP does not wish to enforce the rule of law himself, then there is no law.
The preamble of the declaration of independence states this idea more eloquently. The person you are responding to doesn't feel any personal responsibility for protecting a law based government, and if everyone feels that way, whoever has the most power gets their way, because who is going to stop them, who will provide consequences when the legal system is a weapon of the powerful, rather than a check on power?
The aggrieved parties are welcome to sue. But it won't get on the docket for over a year at least. but will there be any DoJ lawyers around to care then? Or support staff? Will anyone care? It's looking grim.
The declaration of independence[1] was America's founding document, it laid down why the British colonizing the American continent felt they had a right to overthrow their government and secede. It was likely also written to create a mandate[2]/consent for the new ruling government. The document is extremely relevant to Americans right now who have forgotten its contents and what it cost.
It is somewhat of a culmination of the Age of Enlightenment[3], which is period where philosophical thinkers largely tried to make the "golden rule"[4] rigorous. John Locke[5] was a philosopher who wrote about the idea of a "social contract"[6] which is the absolute core of liberalism and "western"[7] ideals. The social contract is a philosophical idea, but the declaration of independence was a real world implementation of it. I think the french have their own.
A well armed militia is somewhat connected to this idea in that the 2nd amendment en-codifies the right to be able to withdrawal consent to be governed[8] when a government stops protecting rights. In many ways it is a canary in the coal mine for despotism. Technology however has advanced to a point where guns don't matter too much because a despotic government can prevent "free association"[9] with the use of a massive surveillance state that can detect "militias" growing before they are able to gather enough power to withdrawal consent.
Conservatism/Liberalism is a little confused in America. Liberals abandoned some of the core tenets of liberty, such as the 2nd amendment, solidarity, and making sure that those who violate the social contract experience consequences -- crime can't go unpunished and unjustices can't be allowed to fester. Liberals don't want to pay the maintenance cost of maintaining rule of law[10] because speaking truth to power[11] or meaningfully challenging those in power is dangerous. "Freedom isn't free" is a liberal idea born out of liberal philosophy despite conservatives saying it. "If none of us will die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny" is something some Americans grew up hearing from their fathers. Conservatives say a lot of liberal things, but don't understand where they come from or why they say them, creating a kind of "cargo cult"[12] Americanism where they perform American rituals without understanding the substance of those rituals. Conservatives largely aim to "conserve" christian culture, but the vast majority of Christians have almost completely abandoned the teachings of Jesus. Most of them will say things that are correct at face value, but they frequently aren't well educated enough to understand what they say, leaving them vulnerable to abuse.
I went through and gave Wikipedia links to many of the ideas presented because many of those ideas are much larger than the words themselves can convey.
> I went through and gave Wikipedia links to many of the ideas presented because many of those ideas are much larger than the words themselves can convey.
& You did well. Thank you for comment. Forgetfulness is not a luxury we Americans can afford at this juncture.
> If citizens themselves are the final arbiters of justice, you ironically live in a law based society
No, this is mob rule.
> who will provide consequences when the legal system is a weapon of the powerful, rather than a check on power?
This is a bad case for making this claim. While at record lows, the sympathy gap for Israel over Palestine among American voters remains in the double digits [1].
The argument you’re looking for is the judiciary’s role in protecting minority rights [2]. In overruling popular will.
I understand why you would say that, but I don't think you've thought it through, understood the point I'm making, and tried to disarm the strongest version of it possible.
Go and read the preamble to the declaration of independence, seriously. America was founded by citizens of Great Britain stating that they are the final arbiters of justice, not British courts. The British courts would have said the founding fathers are violating the law. They would have found them participating in mob rule, and they did try to put down that mob with an army.
You should answer a few questions:
(1) What is a right, and what is the relationship between law and rights. Does law grant rights, or does law protect rights?
(2) How does a government go from absolute monarchy (king is able to make all the laws and enforce them arbitrarily) to a law based society?
(3) How do you bootstrap a law based society? Can you make a law based society without breaking the law?
(4) Was the civil rights movement under MLK a form of mob rule?
You’re going off piste. I’m objecting to the claim that citizens are the final arbiters of the law. That is not a view that was held by the founders because they were studied in the history of direct democracies, the early forms of which didn’t distinguish between the citizens qua legislators and citizens qua courts.
> But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law.
> That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law
That’s an uncommon reading of that line. Citizens can throw off the government. That doesn’t make them the final arbiters of the law. (Not even legal system. One point of that sentence is you don’t get to choose which parts you throw off.)
This is a whole lot of pedantry to avoid questioning your own beliefs, which isn't surprising, because once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down, it means you have a personal responsibility to do so something if you want justice, and that's a hard reality to accept, so it's easier to live in comfortable denial.
> once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down
Justice, morals and—in my opinion—rights, yes. Even the right of the law to rule, yes. But the arbitration of the law? The particulars of its execution. No.
If the system of law is corrupted, you have to throw out the whole government. That’s why the attacks on our judiciary are so frightening. It’s really difficult to unfuck the rule of law.
What the difference? Legal vs. Illegal only matters if it is enforced. If it isn't being enforced, then there is no meaningful distinction between legal and illegal.
You acknowledge that this distinction doesn't matter to our government, so why pretend that the distinction matters? We should be screaming from the rooftop that it doesn't, because it's important to understand that right now.
If the government has no interest in the rule of law to attack its people, than the people need to abandon rule of law laws to resist their government. If we keep pretending that the rules matter to us while the government doesn't even pretend that the rules matter to them, we will be destroyed.
> You acknowledge that this distinction doesn't matter to our government, so why pretend that the distinction matters? We should be screaming from the rooftop that it doesn't, because it's important to understand that right now.
We should be screaming from the rooftops that it does (or else).
While you are busy defending the status quo, people in positions of enforcement are being replaced by people who are more loyal to a man than to the law.
Once the enforcers are loyalists, it hardly matters how the courts rule.
That assumes that people exist within a shared reality influenced by facts, but people aren't connected to reality and aren't influenced by facts. We can see that with vaccinations.
The system that divorces people from reality is social media, so as long as social media is pumping un-reality into people's lives, I think you're being rather optimistic. What's happening right now is directly empowering social media oligarchs, so they have absolutely no reason to stop. The foundation of their power is un-reality.
This is what I was trying to say but wasn't sure how to say it. You can't deprogram people while they are drinking from the firehose and they have no incentive to disconnect. You would like family and friends, children cutting ties would be thing to force people to reevaluate but they just keep going as normal.
One thing to remember is that the right-wing media has been pushing absurd shibboleths for decades as well as normalizing treating other people horribly on slanderous grounds. That makes it really hard for people to come back because they have an all-you-can-eat buffet of crow. Repairing family relationships or friendships is never easy, and might not be possible after calling someone a “groomer”, “baby killer”, or “terrorist” and in so many cases it’s going to be incredibly uncomfortable to admit having done things like vote for Trump because of an urban legend or Facebook meme you could easily have checked.
It’s much easier to stay inside your bubble, where everyone else will agree with you that your kids and former friends just hate America, and avoid dwelling on it too much. If you’ve ever known someone who was in an extreme religion or abusive relationship, it’s pretty similar and the most reliable way to break the spell is some kind of outside shock which can’t be ignored. Trump might get that with the recession he’s working on but it’ll take time for people to accept that it’s real and was totally avoidable.
I just want to say that if you (the person reading) are one of those people and want to come back , we'll still be here and we'll welcome you. You don't have to agree with us on everything (nobody ever has.) We just have to agree on a few basic principles like the value of the rule of law, the Constitution, and the fact that the people currently in charge do not respect those things.
> It obviously does not matter to the people running this administration, I agree with you.
How is it so obvious? What is an example where they broke a law and they continued to do so after courts ruled otherwise?
There have been a number of cases that were judicially reversed both in Trump 1.0 and 2.0. They may have non-traditional interpretations of the law, but to say they don't care about laws at all is filed under TDS. Obviously they do as it dictates the boundaries and therefore their tactics.
What statements did they make in support of Hamas or their actions? Forgive me for not taking that claim at face value given that literally any pro-Palestinian speech, no matter how measured, tends to get conflated with support for terrorism and/or anti-semitism. Even something as benign as wearing a keffiyeh in solidarity, which the ADLs CEO likened to wearing a swastika.
The closest to it is that the organization he represented supported resistance "by any means, including armed resistance" immediately after 7.10.23. But AFAIU they were very careful not to mention Hamas, positively or negatively.
Sure. But they have no obligation to provide it to you right now. Anyone concluding confidently before we have court filings is obviously grinding an axe. (And it’s happening on both sides. No group has a monopoly on hyperbole.)
> that is enough to revoke a green card of someone married to a US citizen?
If he’s organising support for a terrorist organisation or October 17th [EDIT: 7th], yes. If he’s just voicing support for Palestinian rights, it shouldn’t be.
The government - through the Biden and Trump admins - has been testing out the limits of student repression with pro-Palestine protestors. Think of it as a pilot program for seeing what they can get away with. As we have seen elsewhere, violent shutdown of university protests is one early step on the path towards more widespread repression.
It is fine to not care, but don’t start crying for support once your cause is on the gov’s radar.
headline is misleading, as far as anyone can tell he's been kidnapped, not arrested. allegedly, they:
- follow him in to his home
- refuse to identify themselves
- tell him his green card has been cancelled
- tell his wife they'll kidnap her too if she intervenes
- takes him somewhere
- won't tell anyone where he is, including his (8 month pregnant) wife and lawyer
allegedly they have done this because he's been loudly critical of the policies of a foreign government, which as everyone knows, is not a crime. as everyone also knows, random feds can't just kidnap you even if they think you have committed an actual crime.
Any alien (including an alien crewman) in and admitted to the United States shall, upon the order of the Attorney General, be removed if the alien is within one or more of the following classes of deportable aliens
So while you may or may not need a hearing to revoke a green card, AG Bondi seems to be able to detain and summarily remove you from the US, without the need to do a hearing to 'revoke your green card' if you fall under that statue. (Note that "immigration judges" are not real courts under judicial branch. They are under AG.)
The question of whether the "alien is within one or more of the following classes" should be justiciable. If there were no check on the AG's power to make that determination, then the AG would be able to remove anyone.
The buck stops with AG for the procedural requirements, but you can certainly sue the AG after the decision has been made in (regular) court. For many of those classes the burden of proof is low if AG wants to deport them. Basically if Sec of State deems a non-citizen as bad for foreign policy, that'd be sufficient for removal. To me this sounds like a feature not a bug, for the executive branch at the Secretary level to be able to exclude a non-citizen persona non grata from the privilege of staying in the US.
Also precedent exists (Harisiades v. Shaughnessy) that suggests deportation does not violate the First Amendment in these cases.
I think you’re more or less right on the law, but I do think it is sad that activity that would likely be non-punishable as applied to citizens can get you ejected from the country if you’re a non-citizen. There’s not much principle there.
Also there’s a bit of a wrinkle in the Harisiades case: first, it was written at the height of the Red Scare, and likely wouldn’t have concluded the same way had it been adjudicated after that ended and the Warren court era began. Second, the Court had to find that the Communist Party advocated for violent overthrow of the country in order to hold their membership as not protected by the First Amendment. Had it not done so, the court might have found that their activity was protected.
I guess whether it is sad (chilling effect) or exciting (prevents abuse of paradox of tolerance) depends on your perspective on the particular issue, but the principle here is a non-citizen is a non-citizen. They should not get other ideas. There are many legal activities that non-citizens cannot do: namely they cannot engage in work without authorization, for example. LPRs are given more leeway but those are all within the realm of INA itself not constitutionally protected. What INA giveth INA taketh away.
I understand. My point is that, if one of our founding principles is that government overreach should be defended against and thus constrained--a principle that guides our Constitution and is enshrined in the Bill of Rights--it really shouldn't matter whom it's protecting. Fenceposts don't move when a horse tries to get through instead of a cow.
To be fair, the Court did not hold that aliens aren't protected by the Constitution. It avoided the question by holding that the aliens' activities weren't protected, and that Fifth Amendment protections are different (and less stringent) for civil process than for criminal process.
I think the alien is still protected under First Amendment in the sense that you cannot criminally charge him of a crime. It simply has a consequence as outlined in the context of INA, losing a benefit that is obviously not applicable to the US Citizens in the first place, just like a US Citizen could lose a public job (Garcetti v. Ceballos).
Feels like nobody ran an integration test, and we're about to find out that 1st amendment violations are an emergent property of a complex system riddled with accountability sinks.
Does it matter if he was 'arrested'? They didn't and are not following proper protocol. There was no warrant for his arrest, he's being denied his right to an attorney and are refusing to tell his representation where he is even at.
> They didn't and are not following proper protocol. There was no warrant for his arrest
Again, police don’t need a warrant with probable cause.
> he's being denied his right to an attorney
Source? His attorney is quoted in the article.
> refusing to tell his representation where he is even at
Source? The article states he’s at “an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.”
There are obvious First Amendment and free speech issues with this arrest. Those get diluted if folks start making things up about the severity of the situation.
> Again, police don’t need a warrant with probable cause.
Yes you do. You can not just barge into someones home and perform an illegal search + arrest without extreme probable cause.. And nothing they say would rise to that level of arresting someone solely on probable cause because there's no clear imminent threat of violence. They were not able to produce a warrant.
Okay then tell me: Where is he being held? Here's a quote from his attorney:
> "Currently, we do not know Mahmoud’s precise whereabouts. Initially, we were informed this morning that he had been transferred to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey," Greer added.
> "However, when his wife – a U.S. citizen who is eight months’ pregnant and was threatened with arrest as well by the ICE agents last night – tried to visit him there today, she was told he is not detained there."
I literally posted the article in my post that you responded to. Did you not read it before just jumping in to respond that you knew where he was being held?
The parallel AP article (https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khali...) says he is no longer in New Jersey and may have been moved to Louisiana. It also says (implies?) that neither his wife nor his lawyer have been in touch with him nor know where he is being kept.
> It also says (implies?) that neither his wife nor his lawyer have been in touch with him nor know where he is being kept
Thank you. This is concerning. I’ll keep an eye out for a statement from the lawyer. It may be that nobody is telling the press while the internet runs with the meme.
I don't think they believe they can revoke his green card and deport it. If they actually can then they'll do it but what they want are the headlines and the fear.
The Vietnam protestors were right, so were the people who protested the Iraq invasion. And the Watergate protestors had a few good points, then there was also the Civil rights protests that were pretty beneficial in the end.
But besides all of those cases, what have the protestors ever done for us?
How do you address the argument, frequently made, that their terrorist designation is illegitimate (because terrorist is a designation given to non-state actors) and they are in fact state actors (a government of a state) engaged in war?
> How do you address the argument, frequently made, that their terrorist designation is illegitimate
Then address that directly first. Ignoring the terrorist designation and going straight to not only voicing sympathy for them but outright supporting them isn’t something we want to encourage. (Note: I do not know if this activist supported Hamas.)
They usually do. They regularly begin with saying that they are advocating for peace with a foreign country that we have supported an illegitimate invasion into and that all claims of terrorism are just propaganda.
They usually don't dispute any of the atrocities there exists evidence for, they just insist that they are military acts of war by the armed forces of the Palestinian government and that terrorism is a category error, just like the Tet Offensive.
I fully support what you’re saying. It does not line up with my experience with pro-Palestinian protestors in New York City. (Or ACAB/Defund the Police before it. Same problem, in my opinion.)
If say he sent money to hamas I might agree, but as far as the dialog / discussions surrounding Palestine and Israel these days it seems like any support for civilians on either side is inevitably presumed to be support for the worst crimes of that group's nation support for terrorism or anti antisemitism or such.
> it seems like any support for civilians on either side is inevitably presumed to be support for the worst crimes of that group's nation support for terrorism or anti antisemitism or such
Eh, I’d draw a line between someone circulating pro-Hamas or pro-Netanyahu fliers and someone speaking to the plight and the cause. And I’d draw a further line between someone trying to enact policies favourable to them (note: not which they might find favour with, that’s much broader) or sending resources their way.
My point being I have trouble understanding any of what anyone means when it comes to this topic. I’ve seen plenty of folks associate things together that don’t seem to follow.
Someone says “pro hamas”… I’m not sure what they think that is.
Yup. It’s intentionally ambiguous because you have two groups of people talking to themselves, including about how the other group perceives and portrays them. The actual interaction is sparse and frankly horrible, so instead we get two pools of thought careening under their own momentum into increasing incoherence.
>As people like to say, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
This is absolutely not the moment to evoke that argument. Freedom of speech may not protect you from social or professional consequences, it absolutely protects you from arrest or criminal charge related to matters of speech.
This situation is clearly in the realm of the government punishing someone for a matter of free speech. It is not a "consequence" it is direct legal action by the state.
And the claim that being pro-Palestine is equivalent to being pro-Hamas is complete bullshit. Why even pretend that these things are the same? You can oppose the mass-killing of civilians without endorsing the terroristic government that those people live under. The argument that being pro-Palestine is pro-Terrorism, simply because Hamas is the defacto government of Palestine, is not a valid argument given what Israel is doing to Palestinian civilians. People aren't fighting for Hamas, they are fighting against Israel's war crimes against the Palestinian people.
I didn't mention anything about Palestine or Hamas? I just gave a blanket statement saying that I support any non-citizen who openly supports a terrorist organization being deported.
Also it has always been the case that you can be deported for supporting terrorism.
Buddy, this is a discussion about an article. If your comment isn't in relation to the article, that's your issue, because everyone else is talking about the article.
Immigration is not a right, it is a privilege; and withholding that privilege is not punishment. The United States has an absolute moral right—indeed, a moral duty—not to import people who support terrorism, even if solely ideologically.
We're supposed to be a nation of laws. They are not following the law in any respect for deporting a non-citizen who is 'openly supporting terrorist organizations'. Now what would you call a person supporting an action by the state that is blatantly violating the law?
Most green card holders will tell you they feel like a guest in the country. Getting involved in protests and supporting organizations on the terror list etc seems rather silly...