Trump judge shopped and had Khalil sent to Louisiana. The first few paragraphs.

A Louisiana immigration judge ruled Friday that activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported.

Khalil, who as a Columbia University graduate student led pro-Palestinian protests there last year, was detained last month after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had determined that Khalil’s activism was antisemitic and that allowing him to remain in the country would undermine a U.S. foreign policy goal of combatting antisemitism around the world.

During a hearing at the remote Louisiana detention center where Khalil is being held, Judge Jamee Comans said she had no authority to question Rubio’s determination.

After the ruling, Khalil told the judge, "I would like to quote what you said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness. Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process.

“This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family,” he added. “I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me are afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”

Khalil will not immediately be deported. His attorneys have said that if he were ordered deported, they would appeal the judge’s ruling. Comans gave Khalil until April 23 to request a stay of his deportation if his attorneys believe he qualifies for one. And the judge said if they don’t meet that deadline, she will order him deported either to Syria, where he was born, or to Algeria, where he is a citizen.

  • dead [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    6 days ago

    I think people are really underestimating the significance of this case. Mahmoud Khalil was not on a student visa. He is a permanent US resident, married to US-born citizen. Marco Rubio himself said that they are deporting his because Mahmoud Khalil’s beliefs do not align with US foreign policy. This seems like the start of a new Red Scare, probably even worse. There is no free speech in America.

  • Sickos [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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    Worth noting that immigration “judges” are actually just employees of the DOJ; not part of the judiciary.

    Not that I think it changes anything, it’s just fucked.

  • Archangel@lemm.ee
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    This is so stupid. Since when does US foreign policy overrule the 1st amendment? The government is literally penalizing this man over his speech.

    • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netM
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      The entire political system of the United States is founded on the assumption that it shall rule as the undisputed global hegemon. Absolutely nothing is off the table if the alternative is losing that position. It has spent the past century murdering dissidents at home and destroying countries abroad to maintain this position.

      Israel is considered by the powers that be to be an indispensable pillar of this global system. An “unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East” (their words). The ability to destroy any counter-hegemonic developments in west Asia while defending the most detestable (but more importantly, loyal) monarchical regimes is worth more to them than any pretext of civil liberties or small-r republicanism, even domestically. It is the key to maintaining global military logistics, the petro-dollar system, and preventing the Chinese Belt and Road initiative from reaching Europe.

      • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netM
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        The well-known phrase “Shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre” originates from the US Supreme Court case, Schenck v. United States, which determined (unanimously) to uphold a conviction for distributing anti-war pamphlets during the first World War.

        The irony is that the theatre (Europe) actually was on fire. Over 17 million people died.

    • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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      There’s two ways of looking at “rules”.

      What EVERYBODY can or cannot do in a particular situation. Something that explains the norms of a society, the expectations and what-not. They’re supposed to apply to everybody equally (in theory).

      A tool to acheive a goal. It’ll be applied, worshipped, and ignored as is necessary to get to a particular end state.

    • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      nat. sec. is universal backdoor for usa (dumping on courts included), and has been since invention of atomic bomb.

      • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netM
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        This is not how the law has been interpreted historically. If this were true, the detention / deportation of a Mahmoud, a permanent resident (“green card” holder, though not a citizen), would not be groundbreaking news. The empire is trying to make this so (and once it is so, they will keep pushing. Maybe dual-citizens will be next. But really, if anybody is sufficiently troublesome they will just kill them like Fred Hampton or MLK, citizenship be damned).

        From an IT / bureaucracy standpoint, they are continuing to shift the line from “you can’t do this” to "you can’t do this to treatlerites treatler " which means we shift from “you’re not supposed to build this oppressive surveillance panopticon” to “we will pay you billions of dollars to develop this oppressive surveillance panopticon, you just can’t use it against this ever-smaller category of people yet.

      • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.netM
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        I’m disappointed that someone from lemmygrad could be so easily proven completely wrong. Not that it matters, they are trying to find ways to deport naturalized citizens as well as trying to revoke birthright citizenship.

        You are painfully naive and laughably wrong.

        • porcupine@lemmygrad.ml
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          To be fair, I read this as a descriptive claim rather than a normative one. It’s difficult to look at the current facts we’re discussing and conclude “actually, Mahmoud Khalil isn’t currently in jail and won’t be deported, because the first amendment won’t allow it regardless of citizenship”. The constitution is made up bullshit that means no more or less than the state decides it means in any given situation. Trump could drone strike this guy on American soil and there’s not a single legal mechanism that would stop him or punish him for it.

      • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        Why does it say citizens can vote but “people” can have free speech/assembly? Legally speaking, it doesn’t seem like you can violate the 3rd 4th 5th or 6th amendments just because the individual is not a citizen

    • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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      Judge shopping. The republicans have a huge fondness for it - for obvious reasons. Although they’d claim it’s a coincidence that they always want Cletus Racist III as their judge.

      Forum shopping

      Forum shopping is a colloquial term for the practice of litigants taking actions to have their legal case heard in the court they believe is most likely to provide a favorable judgment.

  • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A D2A

  • Preston Maness ☭@lemmygrad.ml
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    Khalil, who has a green card, is a lawful permanent resident. In ordering Khalil’s deportation, Rubio relied on a rarely used federal statute from the 1950s that played a major role in shaping American immigration during the Cold War. The McCarran-Walter Act, or the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952, gives the secretary of state authority to decide that a noncitizen’s presence in the United States threatens the country’s foreign policy goals. [emphasis added]

    I think it’s telling that, 30 years since the Cold War’s conclusion, news outlets are still steering clear of describing what the war was actually fighting against: socialism. The statute was developed during the second Red Scare and was an outgrowth of McCarthyism, a series of anti-communist witch hunts. 30 years later, the mass media are still Inventing Reality.