Top Democratic officials spent the better part of the last decade warning that Donald Trump must not become president, because he would become a dictator, act like a dangerous authoritarian, and be Adolf Hitler reincarnate. Now, as outrage builds over Trump’s attempt to strip a permanent resident of his green card and unlawfully deport of him over his antiwar activism, many Democratic leaders have either been silent or offered only the weakest of objections.
It’s fair to say that the overall Democratic response so far to what has roundly and correctly been called the most serious assault on the First Amendment in years has been a mixed bag. The case is the exact kind of authoritarian overreach that high-ranking Democratic officials have claimed to be fighting the last eight years.
On Saturday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the Columbia University student protests against the war in Gaza who is a permanent resident and whose US citizen wife is eight months pregnant. They then spirited him a thousand miles away to a scandal-ridden detention facility in Louisiana, while Trump officials announced they had summarily revoked his green card — something government officials can’t actually do — and were getting ready to deport him. The administration has not only not shown evidence he’s committed any crime to justify this, they are being quite explicit that he hasn’t committed one, but that he has simply been targeted because of his political views.
It’s not that all Democrats have been MIA on the matter. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s official Twitter/X account tweeted out “Free Mahmoud Khalil” on Monday, the same day that New York attorney general Letitia James said she was “extremely concerned” about his arrest and was keeping an eye on it. Just yesterday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) put out a statement straightforwardly defending Khalil’s rights, hitting Trump on…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
