The detention of Mahmoud Khalil: an assault on free speech?

You have to watch what you say in America these days, said Andrew Sullivan on Substack. Hold the wrong views or turn up to the wrong protest rally and you could find yourself chucked out of the country, even if you're a legal permanent resident and have committed no crime.

Just ask Mahmoud Khalil. Immigration officers arrested the Syrian-born pro-Palestinian campus activist earlier this month in his flat in Manhattan, and whisked him off to a detention facility in Louisiana. Pending the result of a legal battle over his future, he's set to be deported – and other student visa and green-card holders could potentially face the same threat.

The Trump administration has launched a "McCarthyite" AI-assisted programme called "Catch and Revoke", which will scan social media accounts and news reports for signs of non-citizens allegedly engaging in antisemitism. "This is the first arrest of many to come," the president posted on social media following Khalil's detention. "We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathisers from our country – never to return again."

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Deporting green-card holders is not a step that should be "taken lightly", said The Wall Street Journal. There are nearly 13 million of these people in America and they secured their residency status through a legitimate legal process. However, a green card does come with obligations. The law grants the secretary of state the power to deport an immigrant who either "endorses or espouses terrorist activity", or is a representative of a group that does so. Khalil would seem to have violated that term. He was a lead negotiator for the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group, which, among other things, has referred to Hamas's 7 October slaughter of Israelis as a "moral, military, and political victory".

As the "public face" of such a hateful outfit, Khalil fully deserves to be chucked out of America, said Josh Hammer in the Los Angeles Times. "The day the US loses the ability to deport non-citizens who espouse such toxic beliefs is the day the US ceases to be a sovereign nation-state."

I'm not going to defend Khalil's views, said Mona Charen in The Bulwark, but since when did we detain and expel people for saying things we find objectionable? America is supposed to be a nation that values law and due process. Immigration law specifies that aliens can't be deported for opinions or actions that "would be lawful within the US", unless the secretary of state determines that their continued presence "would compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest". No evidence has been presented that Khalil presents such a threat.

"Taking a law-abiding legal permanent resident into custody for speech crimes is un-American", and a clear violation of the First Amendment. If Khalil can be deprived of his basic rights in this way, then nobody's rights are secure. With luck, the bid to deport Khalil may fail in the courts, said Alex Shephard in The New Republic. But it has already helped advance Trump's wider mission – to "create an environment where anyone who holds an opinion that is deemed threatening or simply contrary to the administration and its allies is terrified of speaking out".