DHS agents broke into the home of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and detained him without charges. Khalil holds a Green Card for permanent residency; the Trump Administration is evidently trying to revoke it and deport him.
I have contributed $18 to support him and his legal defense. I encourage all people of consicence to make contributions if you can. I encourage making contributions in multiples of $18, exercising Jewish custom as a sign of solidarity, even if one is a gentile.
Team Trump are after Khalil because he is a Palestinian involved in organizing anti-Israel protests at Columbia University. They are violating due process in several ways, including that they stonewalled habeas corpus until that got too much attention. I have seen no credible argument that he violated any law.
I am not an Israel hardliner. When I call moves in support of Palestinian liberation antisemitic I extend a lot of grace to people who have just not thought through the implications of what they say. I remind y’all of that to contextualize that Khalil has said things about Israel-Palestine which I find repulsively antisemitic.
That is not a deterrent to my donation to his defense; it is one of the reasons why I consider it important. The Trump administration’s attempt to deport Khalil is a wedge to create openings for arbitrary deportation. To truly stand for liberal democracy — the universality of rights, for due process, for limits to state power — we must fight for them on the behalf of the people we like the least.
More commentaries
Vox has a characteristically thorough explainer; one can expect them to add to it with new developments.
On Truth Social, the President said:
Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, you presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s colleges and Universities to comply. Thank you!
Journalist Jeff Sharlet reads that post closely:
Trump celebrating an illegal detention by name tells us a great deal.
- This wasn’t overreach; it’s the plan.
- Fact that Khalil is legal resident w/ no evident Hamas sympathies isn’t a glitch; it’s the point.
- Gaza protesters are means to an end; real target is higher ed.
I know there are going to be good people who have a hard time with that 3rd point. But after a few decades on the rightwing beat, I can tell you Gaza protesters are, to fascists, only the latest excuse. Trump not only doesn’t care about fighting antisemitism, real or imagined; he’s stoking it.
Journalist Josh Marshall underlines:
Those who know me know I was highly critical of what I saw as some of the rhetorical excesses of the campus protests. Khalil and I wld probably get into a spat immediately. It’s all the more important for people who believe as I do to say clearly, the protections of the law are for everyone.
This is not only outside of our traditions and values. It’s flatly illegal. This is the first step to others, not just green card holders but citizens getting rounded up in the middle of the night. Green cards can be revoked. But only for specific reasons. And only after a judicial process.
If the government has a real arguemnt, tell it to a judge. Trump wants everyone to feel afraid, foes and friends. Their liberty is at his whim. That’s a King not a president. We’re Americans. We’re not slaves or supplicants. Elected officials serve us. We don’t answer to them. We talk back to them.
Blogger Emptywheel describes in detail that it’s not the shameless executive power grab in plain sight, it’s the attempt to retcon it afterwards:
⋯ it appears that the Trump Administration made a shameless power grab without doing their investigative work first. So what we see going forward may be nothing more than an attempt to retcon it, to change their story after the fact to adjust for new facts
[⋯]
There’s that old adage, which seems inoperative since Nixon, that it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. With Trump and under expansive authorities of Article II, it often looks like it’s not the initial power grab that might create legal problems. It’s the attempt to retcon that power grab after it becomes clear the facts were not what Trump or others believed when the Administration took action.
Over and over, Trump 2.0 has taken aggressive steps based off bullshit, much of it coming from Elon or other far right propagandists. And over and over, Trump’s top people keep creating problems for themselves as they try to adjust the (legal) narrative to match their evolving understanding of the facts.
So as we go forward with discussions about Khalil, don’t necessarily assume that legal justifications that the government could have used were yet the legal justifications they may argue going forward.
John Ganz makes similar points:
The details here are very important: agents of the state without charging a crime or presenting a clear legal basis have detained a legal resident and are threatening him with deportation
[⋯]
The state cannot make it up as it goes along. It can’t seize people in the night and invent flimsy pretexts later. And if it does, then we no longer live under the rule of law, we live in a police state.
NPR reports a chilling interview on 13 March:
Journalist Michel Martin:
Mahmoud Khalil says he acted as a spokesperson for pro-Palestinian demonstrators and as a mediator with Columbia University, where he was a graduate student. As you know, Mr. Edgar, any conduct that can be legally sanctioned must be described. So, what is the specific conduct the government alleges that Mr. Khalil engaged in that merits removal from the United States.
DHS Secretary Troy Edgar:
I think what you saw there is you’ve got somebody that has come into the country on a visa. And as he’s going through the visa process, he is coming in to basically be a student that is not going to be supporting terrorism. So, the issue is he was let into the country on this visa. He has been promoting this antisemitism activity at the university. And at this point, the State Department has revoked his visa for supporting a terrorist type organization. And we’re the enforcing agencies, so we’ve come in to basically arrest him.
Martin:
A White House official told the Free Press that there’s no allegation that he broke any laws. So, again, I have to ask, what specifically constitutes terrorist activity that he was supporting? What exactly do you say he did?
Edgar:
Well, like I said, when you apply for a visa, you go through the process to be able to say that you’re here on a student visa, that doesn’t afford you all the rights of coming in and basically going through this process, agitating and supporting Hamas. So, at this point, yeah, the Secretary of State and the State Department maintains the right to revoke the visa, and that's what they’ve done.
Martin:
How did he support Hamas? Exactly what did he do?
Edgar:
Well, I think you can see it on TV, right? This is somebody that we’ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country, and he’s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity. And at this point, like I said, the Secretary of State can review his visa process at any point and revoke it.
[⋯ more talking in circles ⋯]
Edgar:
I think if he would have declared he's a terrorist, we would have never let him in.
Martin:
And what did he engage in that constitutes terrorist activity?
Edgar:
I mean, Michel, have you watched it on TV? It's pretty clear.
Michel:
No, it isn’t. Well, explain it to those of us who have not or perhaps others have not. What exactly did you do?
Edgar:
Well, I think it’s clear or we wouldn't be talking about it. I mean, the reality is that if you watch and see what he’s done on the university …
Martin:
Do you not know? Are you telling us that you're not aware?
Edgar:
I find it interesting that you’re not aware.
Martin:
I think you could explain it to us. I think others would like to know exactly what the offenses are, what the propaganda was that you allege, what the activity was that you allege. Well, perhaps we can talk again and you can give us more details about this.
The interview ends there, without an answer.
Edgar demonstrates authoritarian sensibilities. They reject rule of law, institutional limits, or any other check on the direct exercise of power; indeed, they find the liberal insistence on clear & explicit rules and adjudication of those rules morally disgusting. They say You Just Know and actively evade naming how, because they value “loyalty” which does not ask.
And “I find it interesting”? That’s a threat.
Ellie Mystal warns that we are asking the wrong questions:
The only relevant question is not “How can the government do this?” It is “How can we who oppose this fascist regime?”
[⋯]
People expect or hope for the law to restrain Trump and his regime’s use of violence. People keep waiting for Trump to clearly and unambiguously “break” the law, as if doing so will trigger some kind of failsafe protocol causing the statue of Abraham Lincoln to self-animate out of its chair like a democracy-defending golem. But (as I have written many, many times) the law simply doesn’t work like that. The law is not an objective set of rules that snap into action when they are violated. Instead, the law is an argument. It can be bent, stretched, or straight-up ignored by the side that wins power.
Every authoritarian ruler throughout history, from Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix to Vladimir Putin, has had an argument for why their actions are “legal.” I can scream till my vocal cords snap that the government’s actions are illegal, but successful dictators make their actions “legal” through iron-fisted control of both the courts and whatever ineffectual legislatures they allow to exist. Trump is no different. He’s got an argument for why he can abduct a man from his apartment in New York and send him to a for-profit concentration camp in Louisiana. He’s got an argument for why he can revoke the green card of an activist for exercising his free speech rights. He’s got an argument for why he can deport people who oppose genocide as long as they’re non-white.
Adam Serwer says Mahmoud Khalil’s detention is a trial run:
Trump’s assault on basic First Amendment principles may begin with Khalil, but it will not end with him. Trump’s ultimate target is anyone he finds useful to target. Trump and his advisers simply hope the public is foolish or shortsighted enough to believe that if they are not criminals, or deviants, or terrorists, or foreigners, or traitors, then they have no reason to worry. Eventually no one will have any rights that the state need respect, because the public will have sacrificed them in the name of punishing people it was told did not deserve them.
The Trump administration began its drive for absolute power by ignoring congressional appropriations of foreign aid, which are laws. It calculated that Americans would be callous enough not to care about the catastrophic loss of human life abroad and that the absence of backlash would enable the administration to set a precedent for defying duly passed laws without consequence. Trump began his assault on antidiscrimination law with a vicious campaign against trans people — but has already broadened that campaign into a sweeping attempt at a great resegregation of American life. The detention of Mahmoud Khalil begins a dangerous new phase, in which the Trump administration will attempt to assert an authority to deprive people of due process based on their political views.
[⋯]
It does not matter if you approve of Khalil’s views. It does not matter if you support the Israelis or the Palestinians. It does not matter if you are a liberal or a conservative. It does not even matter if you voted for Trump or Kamala Harris. If the state can deprive an individual of his freedom just because of his politics, which is what appears to have happened here, then no one is safe. You may believe that Khalil does not deserve free speech or due process. But if he does not have them, then neither do you. Neither do I.
Anti-commentary
Over on Bluesky, Judith Shulevitz wrote a thread which showed up shared on my feed as a bad example, and I want to foster some precision about what is wrong with it.
I strongly defend Mahmoud Khalil’s right to have rights, due process, and all the other protections to which his green card entitles him. The way he is being treated is egregious and wrong. But I think we should be clear about what he has done. His actions do not constitute protected speech because even free speech is constrained by rules — time, place, manner, and other legitimate restrictions. He hasn’t been punished by any disciplinary body, but he’s no martyr.
Take the case we’ve all followed closely: the occupation of the Barnard library.
First, he was part of a group that barged onto the campus without permission — the campus is not open. Then he was part of a group that barged into the library, knocking over or manhandling (not clear which) a security guard to the point at which he had to go to the hospital.
Is protest allowed indoors? No. Here’s FIRE: Because of concerns about disruption, noise, and even fire safety, colleges may generally impose more restrictive rules on what students can do inside buildings.
Then Khalil was part of a group shouting through a bullhorn into a library. It is expressly forbidden to do that, because’s it’s a dramatic disruption of the educational process. Call it the hecklers’ veto of studying. Then he was part of a group that handed out leaflets stamped by Hamas, among other things, and put up a poster of Sinwar.
That’s not something that should be prosecuted by the government — it should have First Amendment protection — but private universities don’t have to abide by the First Amendment; they do have to abide by Title VI. The material they distributed celebrated the massacre of Israelis. That is a violation of rules against threatening or harassing a group on the basis of national origin, and maybe on the basis of religion.
And let’s think for a minute about what they were protesting: the expulsion of students who burst into a class taught by an Israeli and shut it down and refused to leave. Meanwhile, they handed out flyers (well, since the students refused to take them, they flung then on the ground) that featured, among other things, a giant jackboot stomping on the Star of David. None of this is protected speech. It’s also effectively heckling — preventing the teacher from speaking.
So Khalil is no hero. It’s just that there is no basis in law, as far as I can tell, for the way the government is mistreating him.
I saw a lot of people responding to the merits of her critique of Khalil. I think:
- Khalil’s Palestinian liberation advocacy serves a vital cause but is pretty darned bad in the particulars
- Shulevitz’ commentary addresses some real questions about his advocacy in ways I sharply disagree with
- Shulevitz’ take on his advocacy efforts is still legitimate
- It is bad to chew on the particulars of his advocacy like this
Yes, Shulevitz bookends her thread with the actually important thing, the lawlessness authoritarianism of the government’s actions.
But.
While I don’t like to rest too much on faulting the tone of commentaries, it does in fact matter how the kicker saying “it’s just that” trivializes the important thing. It does in fact matter how this comment sweeps past the main thing to spend most of its time examining Khalil’s failings.
We have to make the important thing the important thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment