If you hold a green card and support an organization which has been deemed a terrorist organization by the US government, you are taking a giant risk and are quite likely to be deported (legally). Section 237 of INA explicitly calls it out.
Most green card holders will tell you they feel like a guest in the country. Getting involved in protests and supporting organizations on the terror list etc seems rather silly...
This is relevant if they can show that he was deemed to be supporting a terrorist organization, which of course would require him to show up in court and would require the government to defend their decision. They have done neither, and have instead moved him over 1000 miles from his lawyers without telling them
- massive citation needed on the 'this person organized protests where people got hurt'. Here is a pro-israel group that explicitly tracks antisemitic behavior, and all they have on the guy is that they don't like his speech: https://canarymission.org/individual/Mahmoud_Khalil
- greencard holders have very strong legal protections, including (of course) first amendment protections (see: https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/after-we-grant-your-green-c... -- "Be protected by all laws of the United States, your state of residence and local jurisdictions"). Those first amendment protections would mean nothing if USGov could just deport anyone whose speech they do not like without trial.
The problem, of course, is the 'detained/deported without trial' bit. You can claim whatever you want about what is or isn't true, but we can't ever adjudicate the question if it doesn't go to a court, which this admin seems to be trying to avoid. Specifically, if it turns out that he did NOT ever indicate support for any terrorist organizations (as determined by the courts), he would be free and clear even under your (imo ridiculous) standards, and this whole thing is a straightforward case of an authoritarian government compelling speech. Something that I'd hope the HN crowd is particularly sensitive to.
They aren't claiming he committed a crime. There will be no trial in a criminal court. The immigration court is a part of the administrative branch (it's part of homeland security).
Being protected by the laws doesn't much help here - the law says he is a deportable alien if he has supported a terrorist group. There is various case law on what is and is not protected under the first amendment, but there isn't just a free pass to say whatever you want.
The case is quite straightforward indeed - if he did support a terrorist group (and I have no insight on what he actually did), he will be almost certainly be deported.
Do you have a citation for anything linking him to actual violence? Permanent residents are protected by U.S. laws, including the 1st amendment, so simply protesting shouldn’t be enough unless they can show a serious crime.
Yes (the link is that he gave interviews at the encampments where that happened), but it doesn't even matter what he actually did. If you really want to, yes, you can find videos of him defending the violence. It's not hard to find on Youtube. I don't think I could find video where he, personally, commits violence.
But it doesn't matter.
Visas can be granted or withdrawn at the president's discretion. You're absolutely right that visa holders are protected by US laws ... but that doesn't protect them from losing said visa.
Deportation is also at the president's discretion. So the same applies.
But they are definitely protected by US laws. You cannot kill a them. You will get arrested for stealing from them. Even if they're being deported. But the executive ("the president"), ie. ICE, can forcibly remove any visa holder, from US soil, that is perfectly within the law.
> Yes (the link is that he gave interviews at the encampments where that happened), but it doesn't even matter what he actually did
In other words, no, you don’t. Talking to reporters is covered by the first amendment. Talking to school officials is covered by the first amendment. Being at a protest is covered by the first amendment. Simply at protest where other people do something illegal is covered by the first amendment, too. Unless there’s evidence that he was personally doing or inciting illegal activity, this should be textbook civil rights law.
> Green cards can be granted or withdrawn at the president's discretion.
> Unless there’s evidence that he was personally doing or inciting illegal activity ...
I bet any decent prosecutor can make the case that organizing (and defending) a protest that engages in violence is illegal, including when the organizer cannot be proven to directly participate in the violence.
And, frankly, (my personal moral opinion) that is just not OK to do. If this happens, you walk away. If you don't, there may be consequences.
But if you want to shout that there is no direct proof of this person directly committing violence, well, no, there isn't. Al Capone famously also never hurt a fly (or at least, never convicted for that), in the same manner: he organized violence against people, he did not do it himself.
> Can you provide a citation to that law?
Again, this will be subtle, so if you want to shout "so you CAN'T" again, you'll probably be able to. You will not get any response beyond that. Specifically what is not addressed in my response is the conflict between Federal law and States' law. But here you go:
TLDR: the secretary of state (and thus the president) can request that a visa be revoked, and that's that. He is not limited in that. Here is the secretary of state announcing his intention to do just that:
> I bet any decent prosecutor can make the case that organizing (and defending) a protest that engages in violence is illegal, including when the organizer cannot be proven to directly participate in the violence.
Let them make case rather than contributing your credibility pro bono. That’s why we have courts, and also I feel compelled to note that the courts have tossed out tons and tons of those cases as prosecutorial overreach. Speculation without evidence isn’t going to matter in a fair court, and if we’re at the point where the courts no longer care about laws or evidence I doubt you’d want to be helping them.
If you look at past protests, there’s a pattern where the police arrest many people but ultimately only a few even face trials because even if something is unambiguously illegal like chucking a brick through a window or starting a fire, it’s hard to prove that anyone who isn’t right there approved or helped commit the crime. Going to a protest, joining a chant, waving a sign, or speaking up on behalf of the protest movement doesn’t mean you support violence unless you were specifically calling for violence. None of the links you shared showed him shouting for genocide and even the people who’ve been branding him as anti-Semitic rely on vague, sweeping claims which mostly seem to imply guilt by association. It’s always possible that a trial will show stronger evidence but I think almost all of the reaction here is that there absolutely should be a trial.
I get where you're coming from, but defending this particular guy also offends me. When Trump apprehends someone for, say, protesting Tesla, I'll climb on the barricades.
IIRC a Jewish billionaire funded a van which drove around campuses doxxing students who had little or nothing to do with the protests. He also sent lists of those students to potential employers.
for your sanity stop replying to invalidname, that dude is in every single Israel / Palestine post, with non-stop commenting. I think he's (she's?) paid to astro-turf here. Just look at their history, and then look at mine for a convo that I have had with them in the past.
Looks like the article is describing a poorly-considered letter, not protests. And in any case, it seems irrelevant to the protests Mahmoud Khalil was part of.
I take offense at the idea that an anti-war and/or anti-genocide protest would necessarily¹ be "100% pro Hamas," since you could make the same argument about any similar protest with a drastic imbalance of power: pro-Ukraine, anti-Vietnam-War, etc. What I'm hearing is "stop struggling, you'll only make it worse" as dozens of Palestinian civilians are blown up for each murdered Israeli. The only way not to care is if you've dehumanized these people completely.
Wherever you get your notions from, they are certainly not coming from "logical people."
¹ (Which is not to discount that there were some anti-semitic and pro-Hamas protesters as well. My sense is that they were far from the majority.)
And if you want to have a fight about technicalities, you're both wrong. He didn't describe himself as either pro-Hamas or pro-Palestinian. He described the protests as anti-Israel ...
As anti-Israel's existence, to be exact, not anti-Israel's actions in Gaza or anywhere else.
That's what the last paragraph is about. You're technically right. He spoke out against Israel's right to exist. That's functionally the same, or even worse, but not exactly identical to what you mention. You pick.
In the five links you provided, there is nothing supporting that he spoke out against Israel's right to exist or that he described the protests as anti-Israel. Can you provide anything that supports your statements?
but you say yourself you don't know what the facts are. Deriding the guy as 'rather silly' is basically accepting the claims by ICE at face value and judging him accordingly. It seems like it would be smarter to gather or wait for facts before drawing a conclusion.
It was written because most people here seem to be confused about the law - ie they think even if someone did what they say they are somehow protected. They are not. No one was derided because it was a hypothetical
Legal cases are often considered in this fashion - assume the accusation is correct on the facts about a hypothetical person - what is the law? Else you waste a lot of time and money figuring if someone did something only to realize "ok he did that, but as it happens, that's totally fine!". Once you are certain the claim is actually problematic, then you turn to the facts - did the person in question do it?
If it’s true that they can most deport anyone at their discretion, why does the actual have a long list of specific reasons, most of which are felonies or other crimes which would normally carry long jail sentences?
This is not the correct law. I think this is a law where congress is trying to force the US attorney general (and with them the states' attorneys general) to immediately rescind a visa and deport individuals in certain cases, such as the named felonies.
A lot such laws exist, because there has been a long fight between the federal government and various states about deportation (and of course, it's not just federal vs states, there's also states that want people in other states to get deported, e.g. New York vs Texas)
Can you point me to the law you believe covers this? All of the coverage I’ve read says otherwise and that includes older discussions from Trump’s first term. Everything says some kind of serious crime - felony, support for terrorism, etc. – or something like marriage fraud or other problems with his actual immigration application.
That’s specific to non-immigrant visas - students, diplomats, business travelers, etc. where the visa is time-limited and linked to a particular purpose such as being an employee of an American business or teaching at a college. The best known example on HN is the H1-B visa but there are quite a few others:
As a green card holder, he was covered on the other type (immigrant) which does not assume that you’re intending to leave the country. I don’t know anything about his personal life but as the spouse of an American citizen he should easily have qualified:
The key thing which separates a green card from a regular visa of either type, and why people tried so hard to get them, is that it offers legal rights such as the ability to sponsor family members for their own permanente residency and, most relevant, legal protections closer to a citizen’s.
They probably invoked very particular section of the law which gives a power to the US Secretary of State to take green card in extraordinary circumstances of danger to the states.
The provisions you keep citing most likely can’t be invoked like this, and must involve immigration courts. It’s much harder for the state to remove permanent residents than visa holders.
They showed up at first saying they were revoking his student visa, were surprised he didn't have a student visa and was here because he is a permanent resident, and then they made a bunch of stuff to justify hauling him away to imprison him in Louisiana.
Most green card holders will tell you they feel like a guest in the country. Getting involved in protests and supporting organizations on the terror list etc seems rather silly...