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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32465 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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So here is the new juicy one.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/11/us/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-ice-green-card-hnk/index.html

A federal judge in New York has blocked any efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist at Columbia University who was arrested Saturday night, until a conference Wednesday, according to court documents. It’s unclear whether he will appear in court on Wednesday. “To preserve the Court’s jurisdiction pending a ruling on the petition, Petitioner shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court orders otherwise,” the Monday filing said. Khalil, who helped lead Columbia’s student protest movement demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, was arrested Saturday night by federal immigration authorities who said they were acting on a State Department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney. His arrest is the latest escalation by Trump – in what he calls “the first arrest of many to come”– to crack down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses, and comes days after he vowed to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” involved in “illegal protests.” On Monday evening, hundreds carried signs as they marched through lower Manhattan and called for Khalil’s release. Khalil, who completed his work on his master’s degree in December, was at the forefront of the student-led anti-war movement at Columbia University last year. He was among those under investigation by a new university committee that brought disciplinary charges against dozens of students for their pro-Palestinian activism, according to The Associated Press. “ICE’s arrest and detention of Mahmoud follows the US government’s open repression of student activism and political speech, specifically targeting students at Columbia University for criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza,” Khalil’s attorney Amy Greer said. “The US government has made clear that they will use immigration enforcement as a tool to suppress that speech.”

Couple of thoughts:

Section 3(b)(VII) of 8 U.S. Code § 1182

endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization;

Chances of him being in support of Hamas are not that low. He is activist - so earning or giving money from someone related to hamas is plausible. He is refugee grown Syria - so being related or in some way associated with any terrorist organization in the region is also plausible.

This is obviously a 1A amendment violation if all he did was legal. On the other hand a lot of the students' protests since oct 7 were of dubious legality. On the third - the US government seems to have quite wide discretion about who to admit before they are citizens. And Elon of course has access to quite a bit of his deleted tweets and dm's so it could land either way.

I do think that probably the government has a good case since they have designated shitload of organizations there as terrorists and they need a public statement of support for one of them for the case to not be completely meritless. Or a single chant from the river to the sea.

Idk I don't think this is a huge a deal as the libs claim since he is a permanent resident, they're not gonna come after citizens with this. But it is substantively against the ideal of 'freedom of speech'. The First Amendment has been, and this is imo as it should be, interpreted to include explicit political calls for violence as protected speech, so long as they eg aren't part of planning a crime and don't single out specific targets. This isn't just a legal trick, 1A allows this because we recognize that real political speech by people with real grievances (including the right wing) will include such things, and suppressing it will just function to suppress political speech! I personally would have a lot less interesting material to read if everyone on the right (or the left) who ever called for various subsets their enemies to be killed were punished for that. So while Mahmoud probably hasn't produced any interesting intellectual output, I'm not a fan of actions like this.

I mean, he has literally committed crimes at a college where using "reactionary language" is enough to get you investigated and expelled. At some point you have to go beyond exposing the double standard to enforcing a fair one, and handing out appropriate punishment.

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