Secretary of State Rubio is backing deportation for “a big supporter of Hamas,” Mahmoud Khalil, now in custody. Supporters argue that this violates the First Amendment. It’s a defense that, reflecting on previous cases, may fail to provide the former Columbia University student much of a shield.
On Wednesday, Judge Jesse Furman extended his hold on Mr. Khalil’s deportation. The Immigration and Naturalization Act makes one who “espouses terrorist activity,” supports it, or “persuades others to” do so ineligible for a visa to remain in the United States.
In Ireland on Wednesday, Mr. Rubio said he hoped any applicant declaring support for terrorists would be rejected. Likewise, he said a “visitor” saying he “intended to rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, antisemitic activities” and “shut down” universities would be denied entry.
Engage in terrorist-related activities while “in this country on such a visa,” Mr. Rubio said, and “we’re going to kick you out.” Senator Schumer had doubts, although he prefaced a Tuesday post on X by saying, “I abhor many of the opinions and policies” Mr. Khalil supports.
Mr. Schumer said that Mr. Khalil is “a legal permanent resident” and his wife, an American citizen, is pregnant. If the Trump Administration seeks to deport him “for the opinions he has expressed,” the senator said, “then that is wrong” and they’re “violating … First Amendment protections.”
This defense ignores a case from 1942 known as Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, in which the Supreme Court allowed First Amendment exceptions for “fighting words.” These, the court wrote, “by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”
Mr. Rubio said that Mr. Khalil’s case “is not about free speech” but is about “people who do not have a right to be” in America. “No one has a right to a student visa” or “a green card.” Wives and family members, of course, are free to leave with a deportee.
As soon as America won its independence, the question of removing those who side with the enemy surfaced. Loyalists who backed King George III, fearing retribution, rushed to follow evacuating British troops. America was glad to be rid of them.
During the Civil War, the highest-profile anti-war or “Copperhead” Democrat was a native Ohioan, Congressman Clement Vallandigham. In May 1863, a military court convicted him of aiding the rebellion; President Lincoln deported the “wily agitator” to the Confederacy.
From exile in Canada, Vallandingham ran for governor of the Buckeye State. “Shall there be free speech,” he asked in a letter to voters, “a free press, peaceable assemblages of the people, and a free ballot any longer in Ohio?” His answer was a 21-point defeat.
In 1901, Leon Czolgosz assassinated President McKinley and cited an anarchist, Emma Goldman, as his inspiration. President Theodore Roosevelt detested Goldman’s politics. Yet he didn’t prosecute her for them or, owing to her claim of citizenship by marriage, deport her.
President Wilson took a harsher view when Goldman opposed his plan to fill the ranks in World War I. Wilson avoided the terms “draft” and “conscription” because memories of forcing men into Union blue remained unpopular. Yet his Selective Service Act accomplished the same thing.
Goldman urged men not to register for “Mr. Wilson’s War” and was convicted “for conspiring against the draft.” After two years in prison, a director at the Justice Department, J. Edgar Hoover, persuaded courts to reject her claim to citizenship.
In 1919, Goldman wrote that she was deported to Russia “not for any crime committed or even any punishable act charged, but merely on the denunciation of an enemy or the irresponsible accusation … that the ‘suspect’ holds certain unpopular or ‘forbidden’ opinions.”
A German-born anti-Semite, Fritz Kuhn, hosted the infamous German American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. He was later declared a Nazi agent, had his citizenship revoked, and was shipped back to the Reich.
Writing about Mr. Khalil on Wednesday, The New York Sun quoted Justice Robert Jackson. “The Constitution,” he said, “is not a suicide pact.” Nor is it a shield to hide behind while lobbing fighting words on behalf of America’s enemies — and visitors are now on notice that deportation could well be the price of choosing to do so.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
