What are the Stakes of Mahmoud Khalil’s Case?

The Trump administration has made clear that if you dare to disagree with the president, you will be punished.

That was the message when ICE agents illegally arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and recent graduate student at Columbia University, in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian human rights. He was separated from his wife, an American citizen, who is nine months pregnant, and shipped from New York to New Jersey and then to Louisiana.

Mr. Khalil has never been accused, charged, or convicted of any crime. He was ripped from his home, detained and threatened with deportation in retaliation for his political beliefs. His case represents a clear attempt by Trump to silence dissent, chill speech, take over our universities, and attack our freedom.

And he is not alone. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked hundreds of visas of students and visitors for similar reasons.

On this episode, we’ll talk about the details and the stakes of Mr. Khalil’s case – in which the NYCLU is co-counsel. Then in a separate segment, we’ll get into the paper-thin legal theory the Trump administration is wielding to justify detaining and trying to deport Mr. Khalil.

Please download, rate, review, and subscribe to Rights This Way. It will help more people find this podcast.

Mr. Khalil’s legal team includes the New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, the ACLU of New Jersey, the City University of New York’s CLEAR clinic, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Alina Das of Washington Square Legal Services, Van Der Hout LLP and Amy Greer of Dratel + Lewis).

Photo credit: Gaby Díaz-Vendrell / Columbia Daily Spectator

Resources:

More on Mr. Khalil’s case

Mahmoud Khalil is just the first victim of Trump’s unconstitutional crackdown

More on the NY for All Act

Tell Gov. Hochul to sign the New York Health Information Privacy Act

Transcript:

Simon: [00:00:00] The Trump administration has made clear that if you dare to disagree with the President, you will be punished. That was the message when ICE agents illegally arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and a recent graduate student at Columbia University in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian Human Rights.

He was separated from his wife, an American citizen who is nine months pregnant, and shipped from New York to New Jersey and then to Louisiana. Mr. Khalil has never been accused, charged, or convicted of any crime. He was ripped from his home, detained and threatened with deportation in retaliation for his political beliefs.

His case represents a clear attempt by Trump to silence dissent, chill speech, take over our universities, and attack our freedom. And he’s not alone. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio has revoked hundreds of visas of students and visitors for similar reasons.

Marco Rubio: When we identify lunatics like these, we [00:01:00] take away their student visa. No one’s entitled to a student visa. The press covers student visas like there’s some sort of birthright. No, a student visa’s like me inviting you into my home. If you come into my home and put all kinds of crap on my couch, I’m gonna kick you outta my house.

Simon: On this episode, we’ll talk about the details and the stakes of Mr. Khalil’s case in which the NYCLU is co-counsel. Then in a separate segment, we’ll get into the paper-thin legal theory the Trump administration is wielding to justify detaining and trying to deport Mr. Khalil. We’ll get started in just a moment, but first I’d like to ask you to please download, rate, review, and subscribe to Rights This Way. It will help more people find this podcast.

Welcome to Rights This Way, a podcast from the New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of New York State. I’m Simon McCormack, senior staff writer at the NYCLU, and your host for this podcast, which is focused on the civil rights and liberties issues and impact New Yorkers [00:02:00] most.

And now I’m joined by two guests. Donna Lieberman is the Executive Director of the NYCLU, and Bobby Hodgson is the NYCLU’s Assistant Legal Director. Donna, Bobby, welcome back to Rights This Way.

Donna: Glad to be.

Bobby: Thanks. Yeah, thanks so much for having us.

Simon: Great to have you. And Bobby, I wanna start with you. Can you start by kind of laying out the case: explain who Mahmoud Khalil is, what the Trump administration did to him, and why Trump wants to deport him.

Bobby: Sure. So, Mahmoud is our client. Mahmoud Khalil is a, he’s a Palestinian man. He was born in a refugee camp in Syria. He is a recent graduate student at Columbia who is married to a a US citizen wife who is about to give birth to their first child. And he’s also someone, I don’t wanna to put words in his mouth, so I’ll [00:03:00] use his own, who’s described himself as a defender of Palestinian human rights. This is an issue he cares deeply about as a Palestinian man. And as a student at Columbia, he participated in, along with many other students, protests involving the rights, advocating on behalf of the rights of Palestinian people.

As part of that, he was oftentimes rather high profile because he happened to be a negotiator between the administration and students who were protesting to try and ensure that protests could go forward in a way that was safe for everyone. And as a result of that, he caught the attention of the Trump administration because the Trump administration has been, and we’ll talk a lot more about this, basically targeting people who were advocating on behalf of Palestinian rights for deportation if they’re a non-citizen, for the canceling of student visas, and for a whole host of other retaliatory measures that are based on, at heart, their engagement in [00:04:00] First Amendment protected activity and protest and expression, and in support of how Palestinian human rights.

So what happened to him and what is the basis of this case is that he was coming home one evening with his pregnant wife to where they live in the neighborhood around Columbia and ICE agents on the night of March 8th approached him and then quickly arrested him and spirited him away to ICE detention.

There’s a lot to discuss about exactly how they did this. But, a short version is that it was a terrifying thing where he was ripped away from his wife. He was brought to one and then another facility in New York City and then in Jersey, and then very quickly sent away to where he currently sits in a detention center in Louisiana.

Almost immediately after he was approached by ICE agents, he was on calls with his immigration attorney who explained to those ICE agents that he is a green card holder, a lawful permanent resident who has the right to be in this country, has status, and any attempts by ICE or [00:05:00] by the government to try and cancel that were improper and certainly he shouldn’t have been arrested.

The ICE agents heard that and arrested him nonetheless. And since then, it’s become very clear that they’re doing it as part of a broader policy to arrest both green card holders and student visa holders, and target them with deportation and a whole host of other, really insidious actions involving their detention based on their positions and based on their speech. So he and we, as his attorneys and a whole host of other organizations and individual attorneys who represent him now, are challenging his arrest, his detention, and the fact that he’s been subjected to this unconstitutional policy by the Trump administration of targeting people based on their beliefs and their expression.

That’s the short version. But obviously we’ll talk a lot more about the details.

Simon: Yeah, absolutely. And, Donna, I want to turn to you now to talk about what are the free speech stakes in this case. What are the implications [00:06:00] of what the Trump administration is trying to do here?

Donna: Sure. The Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to undermine the independence of higher education in our country across the board. This is a bold and express attack on academic freedom. It’s an attack on universities that the Trump administration believes, claims uphold progressive values, or values of inquiry, learning, equity, inclusion. And the attack on Mahmoud Khalil, the abduction of him in retaliation for his peaceful participation in protest on campus is a shot across the bow to every university to [00:07:00] beware, that they’re coming for their students. And it is part of the message that they’re also coming for their faculty, their grants, their actual control over the education, the learning, the admissions policies, the academic pursuits of the universities as it is. And what we see here is the weaponization of legitimate concerns about antisemitism combined with the Trump campaign of hate against immigrants combined with the Trump desire to quell free speech and academic freedom on campus, all coming together and manifesting in many different things, the abduction of students who are here lawfully, [00:08:00] green card holders who are here lawfully, the cutoff of funding for academic research that has nothing to do with speech, the attempt to control admissions policies, the demand to eliminate DEI policies, which are non-discrimination policies, let’s be honest.

So this is entirely an attempt to turn back the clock on all the progress that we have made on fighting discrimination and the legacy of racism and discrimination in our country and on our campuses, as well as an attempt to turn universities into the mouthpiece and the tool of this administration and its anti-immigrant and anti civil rights and civil liberties policies.

Simon: Yeah. And Bobby, as Donna kind of alluded to, Mr. Khalil is not [00:09:00] the only student that the Trump administration has gone after for exercising their right to free speech. Can you talk about the broader context in which his case exists?

Bobby: Sure. And this is changing as we speak. But as we sit here today, on April 7th, there have been public statements by the Trump administration, by Secretary of State Rubio that over 300 student visas have been canceled across the country for this very same reason in the same way that Mahmoud was targeted. There are other cases now. Mahmoud was the first, but sadly not the last, where people are challenging almost exactly the same situation. Green card holders and student visa holders alike, who in some way engaged in expression that the Trump administration disagree with on the issue of Palestinian rights, have been arrested, have been approached on the street.

There are really disturbing videos you can watch of some of these incidents as they happened in New York City, but also in Massachusetts and across the country. These [00:10:00] people are making a lot of the same arguments that we’re making and raising the same alarm bells that we are raising, because this is now happening across the country on a broader scale than certainly we knew on the night that Mahmoud was arrested. So they’re doing what they promised. They have said publicly that they are going to target people based on their speech in this way, and now they’re following through on that.

And the extent of that is still something we’re learning about, but it’s broad. And it’s going after students who’ve basically engaged in things like signing onto an op-ed about the rights of Palestinian people across the country. These are people who engaged in very different levels of protest.

The one thread that brings them together is that they’re vulnerable as non-citizens, they might be green card holders or visa holders, and that the Trump administration has found a way to weaponize that and go after them in this really aggressive way, spirit them away from where they are, and put them in detention in the middle of nowhere.

So that’s the sort of status of this now. Even as it’s growing and changing and courts around the country are starting to put the brakes on [00:11:00] this. There have already been instances where certain students have been able to get, for example, an injunction, essentially a temporary restraining order, saying the government cannot arrest you even though they’ve expressed an intention to do so and where the same types of challenges that we’re gonna talk about are being brought.

Simon: And Donna, the Trump administration is claiming, as you mentioned, that this case is about combating antisemitism. They’re saying that Mr. Khalil engaged in antisemitic behavior and because of that, they want him out of the country. Why is that incorrect? And what is this case really about?

Donna: This is as much about combating antisemitism as Elon Musk’s salute was. This has absolutely nothing to do with antisemitism. This is all about showing America, showing vulnerable people, college students, college [00:12:00] faculty, college administrations, who’s boss and letting folks know that if you speak up against this administration, prepare to pay the consequences.

And it’s about showing people that whether or not you have law on your side, it kind of doesn’t matter because you can be abducted and thrown into prison for weeks, months in this country, in El Salvador on the whim of the Trump regime, and without any regard for due process. We’re talking about people who have every reason to believe that they’ve done everything right, everything according to the law. But what Trump is telling us is that the law doesn’t matter. It’s whether you have crossed the Trump regime. [00:13:00] That’s why, I mean, I don’t wanna take us down any rabbit holes or on tangents, but this is not so much different from the attack on the law firms where they are forcing law firms that have a history, a reputation of hiring people that Trump doesn’t like or whoever have opposed Trump, they’re going after them and attacking them and threatening them, mafia style. You can only call it mafia style, except they have a much bigger army of thugs.

Bobby: And I think when you look at like the legal underpinnings of their arguments, that only emphasizes what Donna is talking about here. I mean, this is a case where they have taken the position that number one, non citizens have no First Amendment rights. That’s something the Supreme Court has squarely rejected.

They’re relying on some red scare era cases that was about the government targeting communists and naming people as communists and being able to go after them. They’re relying on these cases that have since been very much [00:14:00] narrowed or overturned to argue that people have no rights.

And the nugget of a basis on which they are relying to have done these things to Mahmoud is this very obscure provision in our immigration law that allows the Secretary of State to, in rare cases, invoke what’s called serious adverse foreign policy consequences to try and deport a person, who otherwise has committed absolutely no crime and been accused of no crime, like Mahmoud.

And that language, number one, Congress made absolutely clear when it put that law into place, this is to be used very rarely. It is explicitly not supposed to be used to suppress dissent or to go after people’s First amendment protected behavior, which is what they’re doing here. And when you look at the cases where it’s been invoked in history, it’s a handful of cases involving high ranking foreign diplomats or officials where there would be essentially an international incident if they were not deported. These are people who were accused of war crimes in their home country or [00:15:00] corruption cases that are ongoing in their home country. Now, the government is trying to expand this to swallow up essentially every instance where the Trump administration disagrees with you.

They can now say, well, it would be an adverse foreign policy consequence to have you in our country and we can kick you out even if you’ve done nothing wrong. And we can do that explicitly based on you just having spoken up in dissent. That is absolutely not what the law allows, but that’s what they’re saying. And it’s really important to say that right now, they are targeting people based on their advocacy on behalf of Palestinian rights.

But the way that they’re saying it, they could use this tomorrow to go after anyone who disagrees with them. They’re already doing that, as Donna pointed out. And it’s such a dangerous position for the government to take and really astonishing that’s what they’re essentially relying on.

Donna: And Simon, lemme just add, in First Amendment jurisprudence, we talk about a chilling effect. You know, that laws that are excessively [00:16:00] broad in attacking or undermining first amendment rights are not only problematic because of their direct target, but because of the chilling effect. The impact that they have on everybody else.

And we see that so clearly here. Anybody who is a green card holder or has a student visa is scared out of their minds right now, unless they’re not reading the papers, about being possibly a target of the Trump administration. And what that means is, not only could you lose your visa, but you could be held incommunicado.

Is it El Salvador? Is it Louisiana? For weeks or months? And the Trump regime brags about the people who have agreed to self deport as a result of their policies. Well, that’s testament to the chilling effect. And so I [00:17:00] think it’s important for us to understand and appreciate that it’s not just Columbia, it’s every university.

It’s not just Mahmoud Khalil, it’s every student here on a visa. And it’s not just research at Columbia, it’s anybody who’s got anything to do with the federal government, and like that’s kind of all of us.

Simon: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you both have done a very good job of answering this question, in part I think. I just want to drive home for our listeners, what could happen to the right to free speech and academic freedom if the Trump administration is successful here?

Bobby: I could start. I mean, I think this case is one of many cases, but I think this is a really important and key issue. And it hinges on these like massive concepts and power grabs that the government is trying to take. And it would be a real blow to everyone’s First Amendment rights, everyone’s ability to express dissent, everyone’s [00:18:00] ability to engage in what they have enjoyed until this moment, as really foundational rights, as people who reside here in America, as non-citizens, as students on visas, and as citizens too. If the government’s arguments are to be accepted, if they are to be given carte blanche to essentially articulate some vague foreign policy justification and go after anyone based on their speech, that has implications for all of us. It makes your presence in this country contingent on agreeing with Donald Trump personally and not coming into his sights as someone who he disfavors.

And it much more broadly, as Donna points out, puts everyone in danger of the same type of retribution and retaliation that our courts to date and our Supreme Court precedent to date have made really clear. This is not the type of thing the government can engage in, and the dangers of going down that road are really vast and would start to put some real cracks [00:19:00] in the bedrock rights that people have in this country to be expressing their dissent, to be speaking freely about their ideas, and advocating on behalf of causes that they believe in across the ideological spectrum. So it would create some real cracks in that foundation if anyone were to accept the government’s arguments. On the other hand, we think that we have a really strong case and that Mahmoud should be released and that this policy should be enjoined. If this court and if other courts agree with us, and we will continue to fight for that, I think that goes a long way towards starting to put the brakes on these types of wild power grabs, confirm for people across the country that you do continue to have the right to dissent and to express your opinions, and that the immigration laws and the immigration system cannot be used as a weapon to start targeting people and and tearing down those rights across the board.

Donna: I would just add, you know, what [00:20:00] the Trump administration is doing is McCarthyism on steroids. I think the good news, however, is that they’ve gone pretty fast at us and faster than the American people are willing to tolerate. During the first two months of the administration, there have been a smattering of demonstrations. People, kind of deer in the headlights, wondering, worrying what to do and sometimes afraid. And I think what we saw at the Hands Off rallies is that there are millions of people across the country who will not be cowed, who will not be intimidated, who are mad as hell, and are out going out into the streets all across the country, in New York, from New York City to Sackett Harbor, a tiny red town of population of [00:21:00] hundreds went for Trump by a landslide, right? There was a march across, around, in front of Tom Homan’s house to protest the deportation of a local family that was here lawfully and in the process of getting their status dealt with through the immigration process. So, some people are intimidated.

Those of us who feel less vulnerable, I hope I’m one of them, but you never know, have an obligation to be out there in the streets. Those of us who have legal resources have an obligation to take on and fight tooth and nail to challenge this attack on the essence of our democracy. When you attack free speech like a mafia bully, right, you attack our democracy, and that’s what Trump is doing.

But we’re not gonna let it happen.

Simon: Thank you, Donna. And just very quickly, Tom Homan, who you mentioned, [00:22:00] is Trump’s Immigration Czar, I believe is the title. And so thank you for bringing that in, Donna. And I actually just wanna put a finer point on that. I’ll start with you, but I’d love to hear from both of you.

What can people listening to this who want to take action do to help?

Donna: Well, for starters, people should be out in the street protesting. People should know their rights for themselves and for their neighbors. The most important thing being don’t let them in, okay, that you have a right to say no to these guys who show up and refuse to identify themselves.

If somebody has a right to take you, make them show a warrant and slip it under the door. Just say no, or as some people have said, shut the up, or keep the out. I’m not good at like, putting bleeps in my own speech. But people need to be active. So here in New York, there are a number of pieces of legislation that are pending in the [00:23:00] state legislature.

They’re really important. You can find out about them on our website, but I just wanna highlight two. One is the Digital Privacy Act, that is sitting on the governor’s desk, to protect us from sharing digital information that’s kind of health adjacent, that can be used to go after people who are supporting others to get trans care, gender related care, who are supporting people to get abortion care. When our digital information is not kept confidential, we are so vulnerable. Vulnerable, not just commercially, but to government overreach and interference and retaliation for exercising our rights or supporting other people. Number one. Number two, New York for All would prohibit the use of any government resources to [00:24:00] support the ICE Machine, to support Trump’s deportation machine.

And that is important because the Department of Homeland Security, ICE doesn’t have the wherewithal to deport as many people as they want to. They rely on local law enforcement. They rely on local governments. Well, New York City prohibits the use of government resources to support the ICE machine.

We need to do that statewide. So what you need to do is call your legislator. And trust me, whether your legislator is red or blue, ally or not, you need to tell them to get off their butt, stand up for all New Yorkers and do what’s right and stop just watching things happen. There’s leadership that is encouraged, that is needing, and people need to be prepared to take whatever political heat there is to fight [00:25:00] back with a moral message that we believe that all New Yorkers should have the right to free speech, to due process, and to not be deported without due process. And if they’re in the system, if they’re going through the immigration process, damn it, they ought to have the right to go through the process and not be abducted while it’s going on.

So that’s what New York For All is about. Go to nyclu.org. If you’re listening to this podcast, you already know how to get there. So take action and we need you. Democracy needs you. Bobby.

Bobby: You said it all, Donna. I mean, my gosh. But yeah I think this is about, as Donna pointed out, we’re talking to people who are listening to our NYCLU podcast, but this is information, these are issues where there’s a lot of disinformation out there. There’s some apathy out there.

You take this information, you spread it to other people, you make sure people are aware of what’s going on, what these issues are really about, and not some of the sort of really broad mischaracterization that the Trump [00:26:00] administration is trying to get out there, confuse people about what they’re doing and what’s going on, and who’s affected by it.

Make it clear to your friends. Make it clear to people that, you know, might be more casually aware of the world, that you know, this is an issue that affects them, that affects people they care about where they can connect those friends and those people to resources. If they are directly affected, they can call us if they’re directly affected. And otherwise, yeah, talk to your legislators, talk about the legislation in New York that is out there trying to combat some of these vast, overreaching policies and horrible practices. And spread the word and get out there. And make your voice heard in every way that it possibly can, and bring people together in that way.

Donna: And one more thing, organizations like the NYCLU and the ACLU don’t run on fumes. We need to pay our staff. We need resources, so give, give, give. You can find the button to donate on our [00:27:00] website. Give until it feels really good.

Simon: And with that Donna, Bobby, thank you both so much for coming on Rights This Way.

Donna: Thanks.

Bobby: Thank you.

Simon: And now I’m joined by Alina Das. She is a professor, immigrant rights attorney, and co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law. For the past two decades, she’s defended the rights of immigrants facing detention and deportation, including activists and leaders of the immigrant rights movement.

She’s also co-counsel, along with the NYCLU, in our case representing Mr. Khalil.

Before we get started, just a quick note that outside guests on this show do not represent the NYCLU and their views are their own.

Alina, welcome to Rights This Way.

Alina: Thank you for having me.

Simon: Really great to have you. And I just wanna start with a little bit of background for much of what we’re gonna be talking about with you, which is just to say that, the Constitution’s right to free speech covers everyone in the United States and that’s [00:28:00] regardless of their citizenship status. So to try to get around these protections, the administration is abusing a vague aspect of US immigration law to punish protected speech. Trump is relying on an obscure, rarely used provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that says the government may deport people if there are quote reasonable grounds endquote to believe their presence in the country quote would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States end quote. So Alina, with that rather lengthy, but I think important background, can you talk about what the Immigration and Nationality Act is and what it says and also how the Trump administration is stretching it to get around the Constitution?

Alina: Sure. So the Immigration and Nationality Act really governs how immigrants in this country, anyone who’s not a US citizen, can be regulated, and that includes provisions that relate to [00:29:00] excluding people from entering the United States, as well as deporting them. Now, there are a number of provisions that are designed to protect the modicum of due process rights for immigrants.

Many people who are in the United States, who’ve been admitted to the United States, they are entitled to a deportation process, a hearing before an immigration judge, where the government is supposed to prove its charges against them, why they fit into a deportation ground. And then there’s a process for appealing those decisions and seeking judicial review.

Those processes have typically been invoked when you have somebody who maybe has had an interaction with the criminal legal system, such as a conviction, and even then it has to fall in with specific grounds. And then there are other ways in which a person might fall out of status or violate immigration provisions.

But generally this is designed to enforce the rules as they’re [00:30:00] written and give people a clear sense of why they may face deportation and what their rights are in the process. What we’re seeing happening now is that the Trump administration is relying on a rarely used provision that permits in some cases the Secretary of State to actually determine somebody poses, their presence or their activities in the US, pose these foreign policy considerations that allow for their deportation. But the statute itself recognizes that typically this kind of designation is not supposed to happen when the foreign policy considerations relate to a person’s political beliefs and viewpoints, their speech.

And that is because the United States has a long history of using ideological grounds to deport or exclude people from the US. And over the years that has become extremely problematic and embarrassing for the United States. And Congress [00:31:00] actually narrowed those grounds in many respects and required there to be consideration of First Amendment protections.

And so, those concerns are not being reflected in what we’re seeing on the ground. The Trump administration has made it very clear that they’re invoking this foreign policy consideration ground because of their particular dislike of people who’ve been engaged in pro-Palestinian speech.

Simon: And can you talk about the ways in which immigration law and the First Amendment relate to one another and how immigration law has been used as in this case, but more generally, to stifle descent?

Alina: Well, what we’re seeing happening to student and faculty protestors, people who’ve been engaged in pro-Palestinian speech, what we’re seeing today isn’t necessarily new with respect to the government using the immigration system as a tool of retaliation. That has happened in different contexts throughout [00:32:00] history, where the federal government has used its powers of arrest and detention and deportation to target disfavored groups based on their political viewpoints and their speech.

And in more recent history, where we saw this in the first Trump administration was a pattern and practice of retaliating against immigrant rights activists. I represented members of the New Sanctuary Coalition, which a group of folks who have gone through the deportation proceedings themselves, have been moved by what they’ve seen other families experience, and have spoken out about the cruelty of the immigration system.

Those individuals faced targeting under the first Trump administration, including the executive director of the former new Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, Ravi Ragbir. He along with the co-founder of the coalition, Jean Montrevil, were targeted in 2018 by the Trump administration in an essentially a joint operation to take out two of the most high profile immigrant [00:33:00] rights leaders designed to chill speech, to make people afraid to speak out for sanctuary cities, to speak out in favor of our immigrant neighbors. And so we had to file litigation to stop Ravi’s deportation and Jene, who was deported right away, to bring him back. That litigation in both cases was settled under the Biden administration and their First Amendment rights were recognized as being important. But what we’re seeing now focused on pro-Palestinian rights and the right to protest and to be critical of US policy, of university policies, of policies of other countries, that right is also enshrined in the First Amendment. And yet again, we are seeing immigration enforcement being used as a tool.

Immigration law does provide the federal government with lots of discretion when it comes to non-citizens, but the federal government never has the discretion to violate the Constitution. The First Amendment is a higher law, and it should operate to protect the rights of everybody who [00:34:00] is speaking out in this country.

Simon: And beyond the damage and the dangers that you’ve described for non-citizens, why is what the Trump administration is doing, why is there power grab in Mr. Khalil’s case, also a threat to American citizens and everyone here?

Alina: Well, the First Amendment is really about protecting all of the people living in the United States and to be able to not only speak out, but to also listen, right? We want there to be robust, public debate about issues of pressing concern so that people can make up their own minds about how they want this government to react to those issues.

And so, if the government has the power to silence those whose speech it deems unworthy or undesirable to its own goals, that not only affects the people who are facing this draconian use of the law, to be literally abducted from your homes or the streets [00:35:00] and being taken to remote prisons and being unable to speak to the outside world without every communication being monitored.

I mean, that is chilling in every respect of the word. But it also prevents us from hearing what they have to say, to be able to make up our own minds about issues that we care about. And it creates a real level of fear. And it’s not just immigrants obviously, who are deeply scared.

Citizens are afraid that if their loved ones speak out, or if that they speak out, that their loved ones could be targeted. So it really has a ripple effect and it’s the government controlling debate. The government controlling what we can hear and how we can make up our own minds about the situations that we’re seeing unfold across the world.

And that is really why the First Amendment is so important in terms of the foundations of democracy.

Simon: And Alina, if there’s anything in the Mahmoud Khalil case that you think people should know that maybe isn’t getting the [00:36:00] coverage you think it deserves or even if people have been paying some attention to it, that they might have missed, that you think is important to pay attention to.

Alina: Sure. So I think one of the things that is heartbreaking about Mr. Khalil’s case is that he came to the United States as a Palestinian who had experienced as a young person in Syria, the kinds of abductions from the streets and fear of speaking out. And he saw the impact that had on displaced peoples, and he came here in order to study international policy and human rights. He came here with the hope of being able to do something about these problems based on his own lived experience and the experiences of others that he’s tried to help his entire life.

So when you have a young person like this, who’s now a husband and an expected father, and you see what our government is doing to him, a [00:37:00] man who’s gone through the immigration process, first as a student. As a green card holder, his life is an open book who has spoken out based on his deep core beliefs about something that he believes is wrong because he wants to help the situation because he wants to engage in dialogue and bring people together on something that he has experienced on a personal level.

It makes you wonder whether it is now illegal to be a Palestinian human rights defender. Is there a possible way to speak out about your beliefs, about what you’ve experienced, about wanting to help your people without that being something that could subject you to banishment from this country, from to being jailed?

I mean, that part to me I think is what makes anyone from any place, whatever your views are, you want to be able to speak out about your own experiences and be part of the solution. And if you can’t do that without worrying about whether our government doesn’t wanna hear what you have to say and can [00:38:00] jail you and banish you on that basis, I think that part is particularly heartbreaking and should motivate people to speak out on this, no matter what they believe about the issues or the debate that’s the current context for these conversations. I think it’s an important thing that affects all of us and that we should all agree is wrong.

Simon: Well with that, thank you so much, Alina, for coming on Rights This Way.

Alina: Thank you for having me.

Simon: Things are moving quickly in this case, and new developments may have happened since we’ve recorded this episode, but the fundamental facts and the stakes of the case remain the same.

Thank you for listening. You can find out more about everything we talked about today by visiting nyclu.org and you can follow us at NYCLU on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you have questions or comments about Rights This Way, you can email us at podcast@nyclu.org. Until next time, I’m Simon [00:39:00] McCormack. Thank you for fighting for a fair New York.