“President Donald Trump says he is determined to deport “terrorist sympathizers,” including legal permanent residents as well as foreigners with student visas. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the targets have a history of “tearing things up” on “our university campuses” by starting riots, taking over buildings, and harassing people.
While those descriptions seem accurate as applied to at least some of the foreign students whom Rubio wants to expel, they are less apt in other cases. Contrary to the way Trump and Rubio portray this initiative, neither rhetorical support for terrorism nor disruptive conduct is necessary to invoke the sweeping legal authority on which they are relying, which applies to any noncitizen whose “presence or activities” Rubio thinks could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
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That gloss rings true as applied to an activist like Taal, who went beyond praising Hamas (which on its own would be constitutionally protected speech) by engaging in conduct that interfered with other people’s use of Cornell facilities, to the point that he was banned from campus. But Rubio’s description is more than a little misleading as applied to a student like Ozturk, who seems to have done nothing more than express views that offend Rubio.”
The Trump administration are not free speech extremists.
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the State Department has revoked more than 300 student visas, as the Trump administration continues to detain and deport pro-Palestinian student activists at universities across the country.”
“The government now claims “he had willfully failed to disclose his membership in several organizations, including a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, when he applied to become a permanent U.S. resident last March,” reports The New York Times. “The government also said that Mr. Khalil failed to list his continuing employment with the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after 2022.” If these allegations are true, they may put the deportation on firmer footing: It is easier for the authorities to argue that the First Amendment isn’t a relevant factor when the issue is whether Khalil disclosed relevant information during a green card application.
But even if that is true, the Justice Department has shown its true motivation, even if it may be able to weasel out of the hole it’s dug. Since it told The Free Press that “the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law” and suggested that “he was mobilizing support for Hamas and spreading antisemitism in a way that is contrary to the foreign policy of the U.S.,” it sure seems obvious that it was Khalil’s role in the Columbia protests that attracted ICE agents initially. If officials can now find a better pretense to deport him, that may pass more legal muster, but they already made clear that this is retribution for protest. This will have a chilling effect on speech. And if they legitimately believed he was a threat, they should have actually spent the time to substantiate this.”
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“As for what actually happens to Khalil, it’s not clear these new allegations will make much of a difference: “In order to deport Mr. Khalil on the basis of the new allegations, the government would have to convince an immigration judge that any failure to disclose the relevant information was willful, and that it would have made a difference in his chances of receiving legal permanent residency status””
“Does it matter that Khalil is not a U.S. citizen? In the 1945 case Bridges v. Wixon, the Supreme Court held that “freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.” That case involved a longtime legal resident from Australia who was deemed deportable based on the allegation that he had been affiliated with the Communist Party.
“Once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country, he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders,” Justice Frank Murphy wrote in a concurring opinion. “Such rights include those protected by the First and the Fifth Amendments and by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. None of these provisions acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens.””
“the First Amendment is understood as a general restriction on the government’s behavior, as The Volokh Conspiracy’s Ilya Somin points out.
“The First Amendment’s protection for freedom of speech, like most constitutional rights, is not limited to US citizens,” he writes. “The text of the First Amendment is worded as a general limitation on government power, not a form of special protection for a particular group of people, such as US citizens or permanent residents.”
Setting aside the constitutional issue, the detention of a student activist for engaging in what would clearly be considered First Amendment–protected activity under other circumstances is very alarming. If the State Department wishes to proceed with this course of action, the burden is on the government to sufficiently explain why Khalil should be deported. Authorities must persuasively demonstrate that his conduct crosses some very, very red line.
Yet, at present, the government’s justifications don’t come anywhere close to satisfying such a requirement. On the contrary, the official explanation for Khalil’s detention is so woefully insufficient as to be laughable—except, of course, this matter isn’t funny at all.”
“The administration maintains that it has the power to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him because he helped lead pro-Palestinian protests. Indeed, it’s becoming clear that Khalil was targeted because of his speech, rather than any other conduct that might be reasonably construed as criminal behavior.”
“search engine optimization appears to be aiding pro-China, anti-U.S. content in a way it did not just a few months ago.
This would not be the first time China has employed such propaganda tactics on YouTube, even though the platform is banned within China. In a 2021 report, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute described how “the Chinese Communist Party uses foreign social media influencers to shape and push messages domestically and internationally about Xinjiang” — where China is committing an ongoing genocide against one of its minority populations — “that are aligned with its own preferred narratives.” The pro-Chinese government influencers mentioned in the report match some of those that come up in our search results on YouTube when searching for “China.”
In 2023, the same institute found a coordinated influence campaign originating on YouTube that was promoting pro-China and anti-U.S. narratives. A recent article in the Guardian may offer a glimpse into what is happening. It found that “After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos.””
“The Chinese government and Chinese companies do not enjoy the benefits of free speech guaranteed by our Constitution. But American citizens still do, including the often forgotten right to hear and receive information, even from the most suspicious sources. In his seemingly reluctant and “admittedly tentative” concurring opinion in TikTok v. Garland, Justice Neil Gorsuch alluded to the principle and its history while acknowledging the unique technical and security challenges presented by TikTok: “Speaking with and in favor of a foreign adversary is one thing. Allowing a foreign adversary to spy on Americans is another.””
“Multiple lawsuits he’s filed against media operations are “chilling attempts to convert Trump’s complaints about press coverage into causes of action are legally baseless and blatantly unconstitutional,” notes Reason’s Jacob Sullum. He used as an example Trump’s recent social-media post after MSNBC cancelled a TV show: “Fake News is an UNPARDONABLE SIN! The whole corrupt operation is nothing more than an illegal arm of the Democrat Party. They should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country.”
Trump, who calls the media the “enemy of the people,” is all for a free press as long as it’s parroting his political line. He recently booted the Associated Press—which despite its biases provides mostly nuts-and-bolts reporting—from presidential events after it refused to start calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, following our Chief Mapmaker’s childish edict. This is bullying.
The New York Times reported that the administration “would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential press pool, the small, rotating group of reporters who relay the president’s day-to-day activities to the public.” This is not just an assault on protocol, but a glaring attempt to punish outlets that don’t bend the knee. A California Assembly speaker once denied my reporting team press passes for dubious reasons. It’s hard to do one’s job as a journalist if the government denies you access to its activities.
Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, recently threatened criminal investigations of members of Congress and the media who have criticized Elon Musk and his team of DOGE budget-cutters. It’s preposterous for prosecutors to treat feisty comments as “threats,” which is the justification used by Martin’s office. And, as a letter from various civil-rights groups points out, it is certainly not a crime “to identify individuals openly conducting government work that is of the utmost public concern.”
A Trump executive order relating to anti-Israel protests called on universities to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff.” It’s fine to deport visiting students who engage in violence and law-breaking—but the highly respected and non-ideological rights group, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), argues that this edict “would make universities monitor students’ constitutionally protected speech.”
There are plenty of other examples to belie MAGA’s boast that it champions free-speech absolutism.”
“Trump’s anti-DEI orders have—mostly—stuck to signaling that the Education Department would enforce existing civil rights laws and Supreme Court precedents banning racial discrimination. But Martin’s attempt to go after a private religious institution on such vague grounds indicates the Trump administration will attempt to censor speech they perceive as left-wing or “woke,” rather than simply attacking illegal discrimination.”