Ann Behlen Wheeler

Lock Haven

Mahmoud Kahlil, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, was arrested in New York and is currently being held in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. He is not charged with any crime, but the administration wants to deport him. Why? Because of what he SAID. There is no allegation that he provided material support to terrorism — which would, of course, be a crime — but simply that he “led activities aligned to Hamas.” (Posting from the Department of Homeland Security on X) I have no idea what “activities aligned to” means. If you agree with one goal of a terrorist organization, without supporting its violent methods, are you “aligned to” it? That statement is impossibly vague. Khalil is being expelled from the country because of his speech, and this is a violation of the guarantees of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Kahlil was one of the leaders of student protests at Columbia University. You may disagree with the content of his speech, you may think his speech lacked nuance, or you may agree with him. It should not matter. Indeed, the more unpopular a person’s speech is, the more it needs the protection of the First Amendment. That’s why the leading Supreme Court cases interpreting the First Amendment involve people with deeply unpopular and often despicable views, like flag burners, Klansmen and Nazis who want to parade through a neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors.

The administration appears to be trying to deport Mr. Kahlil under a provision of immigration law that allows removal if the Secretary of State personally and reasonably determines that the person’s presence in the United States “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” At least one federal judge has found that law to be unconstitutional. “The issue … is whether an alien who is in this country legally can … be forcibly removed… in the unfettered discretion of the Secretary of State and without any meaningful opportunity to be heard. The answer is a ringing ‘no.'” (Massieu v. Reno, 915 F. Supp. 681 (1996). The judge who wrote those words was Maryanne Trump Barry, the late sister of President Trump. (The case was reversed on other grounds, having to do with the need to pursue an administrative remedy before a court one.)

Perhaps you think expelling one Palestinian legal resident from the country does not matter. The administration has no intention of stopping with one man. President Trump has posted on Truth Social that this “is the first arrest of many to come.” Nor does this stop with immigration enforcement. The Trump administration is already attempting to revoke security clearances at two law firms that represented people the President does not like. The Associated Press has been excluded from the White House press pool because its style book does not exclusively use “Gulf of America” in place of “Gulf of Mexico.” President Trump has sued CBS for $20 billion over the way it edited an interview. None of this bodes well.

As Justice Robert Jackson wrote, in the context of the wartime detention of Japanese-Americans, once a court approves of such a thing, “The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.” Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944) (Jackson, J., dissenting.) Allowing Mr. Khalil to be deported because of what he said would diminish the Constitutional guarantees that each one of us depends on.