Last Tuesday, President Donald Trump told Congress, “I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America.” Not even a week later, his administration has arrested a permanent resident, summarily revoked his green card, and is getting ready to deport him — all because they don’t like his constitutionally protected speech.
The detention and possible deportation of Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested on Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, is the most serious attack on the First Amendment by any president in years. The twenty-first century has seen US administrations routinely trample over free speech, whether George W. Bush’s spying on Muslim American leaders, the surveillance and torture of whistleblowers and journalists like Julian Assange, or the US government’s involvement in tech censorship. This move is arguably more extreme than all of them.
According to multiple reports and statements, Khalil, a permanent resident who was one of the leaders of the student antiwar protests at Columbia over the past year and a half, was arrested by ICE agents after they entered in-campus housing. The ICE agents reportedly also threatened to arrest his wife, a US citizen eight months pregnant with their baby, and claimed his student visa had been revoked. When informed that Khalil was not on a student visa but rather had a green card — one step away from full citizenship, in other words — the agents were at first confused, then, after a phone call, claimed that had been revoked, too. When asked by his attorney to provide her with a warrant, they simply hung up the phone.
Until very recently, neither Khalil’s attorney, Amy Greer, nor his wife knew where he even was. Despite first being told he was being held at an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, his wife was informed he was not actually there when she tried to visit him yesterday morning. He is now…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
