Trump Deports a Legal US Resident to Censor Criticism of Israel

Hey welcome back to my new channel, Documenting the Collapse of US Democracy! I know this must be strange for those of you who preferred the old format of discussing science and critical thinking but those don’t exist here anymore so this is all I’ve got left.

Okay, just kidding, I swear I’m going to try my best to remain focused on the areas that I’ve been focused on for two decades, it’s just that unfortunately, things are so bleak here right now that I think it’s morally incumbent on everyone with a platform to talk about the things that matter, either to help wake up those who don’t realize, to reassure the most at-risk that they aren’t alone, or just to document things for future historians.

With that in mind, today I want to discuss the absolutely terrifying recent development of the Trump administration disappearing a US permanent resident because of his speech.

Free speech IS something I’ve discussed a lot over the years, because it is a central right that protects people like me who criticize quacks and frauds. I’ve received many threats over the years from charlatans who say they’ll sue me for defamation, and I’m very lucky that thus far I’ve been protected by good lawyers and good anti-SLAPP laws, both of which dissuade the jackasses from making good on their threats and dragging me into court.

Badly written libel laws are so convenient to con artist bullies that Trump spent much of his first term threatening to screw up the federal libel laws in the US, which…don’t actually exist.

The good news is that Trump is no longer threatening to do that. The bad news is that compared to the damage that bad libel laws do to freedom of speech, what is happening now is so much worse it’s in another universe of bad.

Mahmoud Khalil is a legal permanent resident of the United States, and last year he gained prominence during the student protests at Columbia University calling on the school to divest from Israel in light of their continued genocide of the Palestinian people. Khalil, a grad student there, helped lead the negotiations between the student groups and the university.

As reported by Forward, following a protest last week, Zionists contacted Secretary of State Marco Rubio and asked that Khalil be deported for his views.

Again: Khalil is in the United States legally. He is married to a US citizen, and he is a permanent resident with a green card. Generally, for a permanent resident to be deported, they would have to have committed some kind of crime. Khalil has not. There is no evidence that he has done anything other than use his constitutional right to peacefully protest against a GENOCIDE.

Additionally, the resident who committed the crime would go through an actual trial to establish their guilt before they’re deported.

The Zionist campaign led to Khalil getting a flood of death threats, and as Zeteo reported, he begged Columbia for help, sending an email that night saying “Since yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation.

“Their attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats. I have outlined the wider context below, yet Columbia has not provided any meaningful support or resources in response to this escalating threat.

“I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.”

The next day, ICE, who ARE dangerous individuals, took Khalil into custody, telling him that they were revoking his student visa. When he explained that he had a green card, they got confused, because ICE agents are fucking morons, which is why they’re ICE agents, and they shrugged and said they were revoking his green card, too.

Even Khalil’s lawyer and pregnant wife didn’t know where he was for 24 hours. Eventually, he was located at a facility in Louisiana. Seems nice.

Trump and his cronies declared this a huge success, admitting that Khalil was targeted for his speech. In a statement Sunday, the spokesperson of the Department of Homeland Security said, “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Obviously that means absolutely nothing. He has zero connection to Hamas, and he has never even praised Hamas, and so the only thing they can do is say that his protest is “aligned to” them, because both he and Hamas would like Israel to stop butchering Palestinians, I guess.

As of this recording, Khalil’s lawyer is desperately trying to stop his deportation. I hope she can. But Trump has explicitly said that this is just the beginning, and that there will be many more arrests to come. On Monday, he wrote, “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, your 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.”

Here’s the part where I declare my conflict of interest. I would care deeply about this story regardless of how it might affect me or my loved ones, but I actually do have skin in this game. I happen to be married to a permanent resident. Back in November, we both knew that this was a possibility, so we came up with a vague plan of where our line in the sand was. We are two privileged white people with a home we love in a blue state, so we knew we wouldn’t be first–that would be the undocumented immigrants, of course. We decided that when they started deporting the more marginalized permanent residents, that’s the big red flag that will tell us it’s time to make plans to leave for our own safety.

So, here we are, I guess. It was weird enough having that serious conversation in November, and it’s downright surreal to have a follow-up just four months later where we actually need to decide what to do if Khalil is deported. And what to do if he isn’t deported, but someone else gets disappeared next.

Because, yeah, I’m an incredibly privileged middle class white lady, but as Adam Sewer notes in the Atlantic, Khalil is Trump’s trial run to see what he can get away with: “The idea that Khalil’s views might have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States is an obvious pretext for expelling him—and a message to others who might hold or express similar beliefs, he writes. “Trumpists simply do not approve of his politics and have therefore resorted to using the power of the state to deport him. Trump has styled himself a champion of free speech, but this is what Trumpists mean by “free speech”: You can say what Trumpists want you to say or you can be punished.”

And that’s what we’ve been fighting against for years when it comes to libel laws: they don’t ONLY unjustly punish people with less money; they also stifle free speech due to the self-censorship that will inevitably occur when, for instance, a science communicator sees a quack bankrupt another science communicator for speaking the truth. Now it’s so very much worse: censor yourself or be disappeared.

And I’m not only talking about Israel’s genocide, which is still ongoing and has only increased in cruelty, as this week they cut off electricity to the two million people in Gaza, shutting down the desalination plants and thereby cutting off a crucial supply of fresh water. Yes, pointing that out is now grounds to be disappeared, but that’s not where Trump will stop.

Do you think crypto rug pulls are a scam? Well, you sound like you’re undermining the new currency of the US, possibly as a Chinese agent.

Have you ever stated that vaccines do not cause autism? Well, RFK, Jr. may think that you’re threatening national security by exposing children to dangerous chemicals.

Are you boycotting Tesla because it’s owned by Elon Musk? Well, Trump thinks you’re a domestic terrorist. No, seriously, he does.

Do you think that Russia invaded Ukraine and should be stopped? Elon Musk says that you’re a traitor. No, literally, he called Mark Kelly, former astronaut and current senator, a traitor for saying Ukraine deserves our help.

Treason is, of course, punishable by death here in the US.
If you care about freedom of speech, you should care about what happens to Khalil. Fourteen congressional representatives have just signed a letter demanding his release. Let your representatives know that you want their names on it. Learn your rights when it comes to ICE (while those rights still exist), and help your neighbors learn those rights by printing off convenient flyers and posting them around your neighborhood. Wear a mask when you protest, and also when you go grocery shopping because COVID is still a thing. And if you’re like me, and you still have some safety and comfort, please do not self-censor. Because as the more marginalized people are forced into silence, it becomes morally incumbent upon the rest of us to speak for them.