“This seems to be one of the biggest threats, if not this “The biggest threat to the freedom of the first amendment,” said Brian Hauss, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU. “It's an attempt to directly punish speech because of the views it puts.”
Khalil grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria but has not been charged with any crime. The archive compiled by Canary Mission is a right-wing group that tracks anti-Zionist campus activists, which does not include examples of threatening or violent rhetoric, but only calls for divestment from Israel. Khalil was suspended for his role in campus demonstrations last year but was revoked shortly after, apparently due to a lack of evidence, and he completed his degree. The Department of Homeland Security claims he “led the campaign that is consistent with Hamas”, but it is an vague, legally meaningless allegation.
Indeed, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, any foreigner who “recognizes or supports” terrorist activities is considered unacceptable. But Margo Schlanger, a law professor who serves as the Secretary of Civil Rights under the Department of Homeland Security under Barack Obama, noted that the provision is rarely used, especially for people in the country, who have largely the same protection of freedom of speech as citizens.
You don't need to get this from a freelance law scholar: During Trump's first term, legal analysis of immigration and customs enforcement came to the same conclusion. “Generally, aliens living in U.S. territory immediately advocate First Amendment freedom equally with U.S. citizens,” it said. “Given the First Amendment concerns seem incredibly beyond that even the last Trump administration recorded.”
However, during a period of nationalist hysteria, excessive extension is common. The closest analogue to this dirty moment is the Red Panic of the late 1940s and late 1950s, when the right fear was widespread fear of communism infiltrating governments and cultural institutions to clear the leftists. My colleague Clay Risen wrote in his new book The Red Panic that the Supreme Court case in 1952 allowed the deportation of three immigrants who joined but later left the Communist Party. Judge Hugo Black, who did not object in the case, said the country at the time “a more desperate trouble than ever in the First Amendment”.
