Are thought crimes now a deportable offense?

In his inaugural address, Donald Trump promised to safeguard the First Amendment. “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I also will sign an Executive Order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” he said. This was music to my ears — but with the recent arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green-card holder who organized student protests at Columbia University, the administration is demonstrating that First Amendment protections don’t apply when it comes to criticizing Israel’s conduct in the Gaza conflict.

I support the deportation of foreign nationals who are in the country illegally or have committed crimes. But Khalil apparently doesn’t fall in either of those baskets. He’s a legal permanent resident, or LPR, who is married to an American citizen; she is eight months pregnant. Khalil was arrested by ICE and is currently in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. The government has canceled his green card and is attempting to deport him, though a federal judge has halted his deportation order as the court considers his attorney’s appeal.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin released a statement claiming that Khalil’s activism was “aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” But no charges have been filed against him — and the administration hasn’t elaborated on how he is “aligned” to Hamas or what exactly he’s done to deserve deportation. “This is the first arrest of many more to come,” President Trump commented on social media. The White House’s official Twitter and Instagram accounts reposted Trump’s comments on the case with the all caps headline “SHALOM MAHMOUD,” which is a Hebrew greeting that means “peace” and can be used as a greeting or to say goodbye. It’s a juvenile and peculiar look for an administration that just signed an Executive Order making English the official language of the United States.

Multiple news outlets, citing administration sources, have said that a provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, is the basis for Khalil’s deportation. The provision says that any “alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” But the notion that the US would suffer “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” if Khalil, one of many student protesters, stays in the country is far-fetched, as relations between the Netanyahu government and the Trump administration couldn’t be closer. Additionally, if the government believes that Khalil poses a threat, how does sending him back to Syria (he’s of Palestinian origin but is a citizen of Syria), which borders Israel, help safeguard the Jewish state?

Jonathan Turley, a conservative legal scholar and author of the recent book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, argued on X that the deportation order is valid because Khalil was “reportedly under investigation” for the takeover of a campus building during pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia. So here Turley appears to be dancing around the clear First Amendment violation by arguing that Khalil’s alleged action (taking over a building) rather than his (protected) political speech is a viable justification for deporting him. But does anyone think that the administration would deport students protesting say, vaccine and mask mandates, if they took over a campus building?

Ilya Shapiro at the Manhattan Institute says the arrest of Khalil poses “no First Amendment problems.” None whatsoever, Shapiro argues because of an INA provision that allows for the “denial or revocation of a visa of any alien who… endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.”

It’s unclear whether Shapiro knew that Khalil isn’t a visa holder but rather an LPR. But in any case, where is the evidence that Khalil supports Hamas? It’s not in Shapiro’s column — and I couldn’t find it in any other piece arguing in favor of his deportation, nor is it in any communication the government has released. Khalil told the AP before his arrest that  there were “13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with.”

Khalil has also previously described himself as a negotiator or spokesperson for the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which has celebrated Hamas’s October 7 attack. And so he may be a Hamas supporter. But if he is, why hasn’t anyone produced a single social media post or other evidence to corroborate the claim? If a foreign visa holder or even a green-card holder is providing material support to a terrorist group, fundraising for a terrorist group or engaging in violence or inciting others to violence, they should absolutely be deported. I’m also OK with deporting foreign nationals who assaulted Jewish students. But it isn’t clear if Khalil has done any of those things — and if his only offense is a thought crime, he should be allowed to stay.

With the promise of more arrests to come — and Zionist organizations such as Betar providing the government with a list of students they want deported — the stakes are bigger than just this one case and the administration must establish clear guidelines and explain their actions in detail. Pro-Israel groups have tarnished many who criticize Israel’s actions as “pro-Hamas” — but many are just like me in that they strongly oppose Hamas but are deeply disturbed by our tax dollars going to support the IDF’s killing of tens of thousands of women and children, not to mention aid workers and journalists, and the annihilation of Gaza’s infrastructure and displacement of 90 percent of its population.

I’m not a legal scholar, and the courts will decide the fate of Khalil and others who are next on the deportation list. It seems clear to me that the government can deport visa holders for nearly any reason it wants to. For green-card holders, the situation is murkier, but regardless, even if the government can do something, that doesn’t mean that it should. Do we really want the world to regard our Land of the Free as a place where you better be careful what you say about Israel?

The GOP is either going to be the free-speech party or it isn’t. Republicans were right to be outraged by the Biden administration’s heavy-handed attempts to censor those it disagreed with on vaccines and other topics. But now that they’re in power, it isn’t time to chill speech on Israel it dislikes simply because it can.