SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
marco rubio
'Very Dark Stuff': Judge Rules Palestine Activist Mahmoud Khalil Can Be Deported
"If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone," one of his lawyers warned.
Apr 11, 2025
A U.S. immigration judge in Louisiana on Friday ruled that Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and former Columbia University graduate student arrested last month after protesting Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, can be deported, a decision that came despite the Trump administration admitting the imminently expecting father committed no crime and was being targeted solely for constitutionally protected speech.
Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans said that she lacked the legal authority to question the determination by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Khalil was deportable. Earlier this week, Comans gave the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) until Friday to produce evidence that Khalil is eligible for deportation.
No such evidence was provided other than Rubio's assertion that he reserves the right to order Khalil's expulsion under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Rubio admitted that Khalil's "past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations... are otherwise lawful," prompting Marc van der Hout, one of Khalil's attorneys, to assert "that this is merely about targeting Mahmoud's free speech rights about Palestine."
Khalil—who calls himself and is widely considered a political prisoner—now has until April 23 to apply for relief, or face deportation to Syria, where he was born in 1995 in a refugee camp for Palestinians, or Algeria, where he has citizenship.
"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," Khalil told Comans after she announced her decision. "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," Khalil 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."
Van der Hout said that "today, we saw our worst fears play out: Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent."
Khalil—who last year finished his graduate studies at Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against Israel's annihilation of Gaza—was arrested at his New York home by plainclothes DHS officers on March 8 before being transferred to New Jersey and then Louisiana.
The 30-year-old's American wife, Noor Abdallah—who is nine months pregnant—has said Khalil's arrest "felt like a kidnapping because it was."
Khalil was targeted following U.S. President Donald Trump's
issuance of an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who take part in pro-Palestine demonstrations.
Last month, Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that since Khalil was detained by DHS in New Jersey when he lodged a legal challenge to his detention, his case should be transferred to the Garden State.
That federal habeas corpus case will continue despite Friday's ruling. Following Comans' decision, the judge in the New Jersey case, Michael E. Farbiarz of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, ordered both the Trump administration and Khalil's lawyers to immediately report to his court.
Numerous right-wing Israel supporters—including the White House—celebrated Comans' ruling.
Civil liberties defenders, meanwhile, decried Friday's decision.
"Today, reading from a pre-written decision, an immigration judge rubber-stamped a shameful determination by Secretary of State Rubio stating that one's beliefs can lead to deportation. We should all be deeply concerned," Diala Shamas, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement.
"We will continue to stand alongside Mahmoud in his fight to come home to Noor, and in his determination to keep speaking out for Palestinian freedom," Shamas added. "This is just the beginning."
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, said on social media: "We cannot allow the Trump administration to end our constitutional rights. The right to free speech obviously includes the right to protest the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians."
"This fascism won't end with Mahmoud Khalil," she added. "It's a threat to all of us."
The new McCarthyism. Violent censorship of left-wing political speech in the name of national interest. And like the Red Scare, these actions were enabled by many Democrats who thought they could do reasonable, managed suppression, until the right inevitably took the reins.
[image or embed]
— Emma Vigeland (@emmavigeland.bsky.social) April 11, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, said on the social media site X that "this is an unbelievably dark day and a direct attack on our fundamental civil liberties."
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relgations, said in a statement that "this Louisiana immigration judge's dangerous, unconstitutional ruling allowing the deportation of a legal permanent resident because the current administration wants to punish him for exercising his First Amendment right to criticize the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza must not stand."
"Although today's ruling is just the first step in a long legal process, it should be alarming to all Americans who cherish the Bill of Rights and basic freedoms like free speech," Awad added. "We are confident that federal courts will see through the Trump administration's lawless attack on free speech and that the movement against the Israeli government's genocide will continue to grow in our nation, despite these Orwellian attempts to suppress free speech."
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich
noted that "Mahmoud Khalil expressed his political point of view peacefully."
"That's supposed to be permitted in a democracy," he added. "If this egregious assault on civil liberties stands, what's to stop Trump from arresting American citizens who support any cause his regime doesn't like?"
Chilling. They are saying that simply taking action in opposition to US foreign policy is grounds for deportation. Think of the proud lineage of protests against US-backed wars, coups, torture... BREAKING: Mahmoud Khalil Can Be Deported, Immigration Judge Rules open.substack.com/pub/zeteo/p/...
[image or embed]
— Naomi Klein (@naomiaklein.bsky.social) April 11, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Khalil's persecution is part of a wider campaign targeting noncitizens who protest Israel's annihilation of Gaza and advocate for Palestinian rights.
Last month, the U.S. State Department announced the launch of an artificial intelligence-powered "catch and revoke" program to cancel the visas of international students deemed supportive of Hamas. Rubio said that nearly 300 students have had their visas revoked and could be deported.
"Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas," he said of the student activists opposing one of the great slaughters of the 21st century.
On Wednesday, DHS announced the launch of a task force to surveil immigrants' social media posts, including those of around 1.5 million foreign students, for alleged antisemitism. While DHS did not say how antisemitism would be defined, critics note that the Trump administration has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition, which conflates opposition to Zionism—the settler-colonial movement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine—with hatred of Jews.
Khalil's advocates vowed to keep fighting.
"This is not over, and our fight continues," van der Hout said. "If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone over any issue the Trump administration dislikes."
"We will continue working tirelessly until Mahmoud is free and rightfully returned home to his family and community," he added.
Noor Zafar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said, "The fight to bring Mahmoud home is far from over."
"We will continue undeterred to press for his release after this startling escalation of the Trump administration's war on dissent," Zafar added. "We will fiercely defend his and others' right to speak freely about Palestine or any other issue without fear of detention and deportation."
Keep ReadingShow Less
In the Caribbean, the Trump Admin Is Implementing a Dangerous Geopolitics of Oil
The new U.S. goal is to lock the region into permanent reliance on fossil fuels, only now under a network of energy-rich countries overseen by the United States.
Apr 11, 2025
The Trump administration is organizing a network of energy-producing states in the Caribbean to provide the region with a steady supply of fossil fuels, despite the environmental risks.
Hoping to sideline Venezuela, the oil-rich country that once provided the Caribbean with affordable supplies of oil, the Trump administration is working to position other oil-rich countries as the region’s primary suppliers of energy. Administration officials are particularly focused on Guyana and Suriname, two oil-rich countries that they hope the region’s leaders will embrace as alternatives to Venezuela.
“The fact that now their own countries—Guyana, Suriname—are able to have and really surpass Venezuela in its oil production and be able to work with its neighbors there in the region is a huge opportunity for the Caribbean,” U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone said at a March 25 press briefing.
The Geopolitics of Oil in the Caribbean
Over the past two decades, the United States has engaged in a major rivalry with Venezuela for influence in the Caribbean. The U.S.-Venezuela rivalry has centered on oil, a fossil fuel that many Caribbean nations import to meet their energy needs.
Early in the 21st century, Venezuela took advantage of its vast oil reserves to become a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean. Under a program called Petrocaribe, Venezuela shared its oil wealth by providing Caribbean countries with shipments at low rates.
Many Caribbean countries embraced Petrocaribe. Not only did the Venezuelan program enable them to meet their energy needs, but it empowered them to begin developing their economies more independently of the United States, which has long been the dominant power in the region.
Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil.
For many years, the United States failed to offer alternatives to Petrocaribe. While Venezuela emerged as a powerful counterweight to U.S. power in the Caribbean, officials in Washington faced the possibility that formerly dependent countries would break free from the U.S. orbit.
With its influence waning, the United States eventually developed its own energy program. In 2014, the Obama administration introduced the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, which offered Caribbean countries technical assistance, financing for energy projects, and political support for regional energy planning.
U.S. officials presented the initiative as a way of bringing clean energy to the Caribbean. The program, they said, would empower Caribbean countries to transition away from fossil fuels and reduce their dependence on oil imports.
“You, the countries of the Caribbean, have a chance at the supply of energy that’s more resilient, more sustainable, cleaner, more affordable than you have ever, ever had,” Joe Biden told Caribbean leaders in 2015, when he was vice president in the Obama administration.
Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil. Believing that the United States could outmatch Venezuela on fossil fuels, they set out to find ways of achieving regional dominance in oil and natural gas.
One tactic was to promote U.S. fossil fuel exports to the Caribbean. “We have more oil and gas rigs running in the United States than all the rest of the world combined,” Biden boasted in 2015, when he was promoting the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative.
Another tactic focused on finding new sources of fossil fuels in the Caribbean. Several U.S. officials developed high hopes for Guyana, a South American country with large offshore oil deposits. In 2015, ExxonMobil announced significant discoveries, raising expectations that the country would become one of the region’s largest suppliers of oil.
As U.S. officials pushed alternative sources of fossil fuels, they also sought to end Venezuelan influence altogether. Acting consistently with the long history of U.S. coups and interventions in Latin America, the United States sought to bring down the Venezuelan government.
The first Trump administration made some of the most audacious moves, openly embracing regime change. From 2017 to 2019, it imposed severe sanctions on the country’s finances and oil industry to facilitate the collapse of the Venezuelan government.
Although the Venezuelan government survived the challenges, which continued into the Biden administration, the country experienced an unprecedented economic collapse. With its oil industry in decline and under restrictions by U.S. sanctions, Venezuela could no longer maintain Petrocaribe, diminishing its efforts to be a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean.
Trump Administration’s New Approach
Since the second Trump administration entered office in January, it has faced a new power dynamic in the Caribbean. With Venezuela having undergone one of the worst economic collapses for a country not at war, including a major decline in its oil industry, the administration finds itself in a position to restore U.S. supremacy in the Caribbean.
Moving to take advantage of the situation, the Trump administration has added a new dimension to the geopolitics of oil. Hoping to permanently sideline Venezuela and exclude it from the Caribbean altogether, it has begun to create a network of oil-producing countries that will provide the region with oil under U.S. direction.
“This is an opportunity,” Claver-Carone said at the March 25 press briefing. Caribbean countries “are going to be able to support each other, to be able to create an energy security framework, which has already changed the geopolitics of the region.”
Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has made several moves in pursuit of its goals. On March 24, President Trump issued an executive order that threatened to impose a tariff of 25% on any country that imports oil from Venezuela. Trump’s order put strong pressure on Caribbean leaders who have been hoping to revive Petrocaribe.
Second, the Trump administration has organized U.S. diplomatic visits to Caribbean nations. At the end of March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Guyana and Suriname, where he praised their leaders for embracing oil production and encouraged them to work together in a new network under U.S. leadership.
Surinamese President Chandrikapersad Santokhi said that he anticipated that Guyana and Suriname “will become important partners for the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere.”
Still, Venezuela remains in a position to challenge the United States. It is continuing to produce more oil than Guyana and Suriname combined, enabling it to maintain some exports to countries in the Caribbean. It is also claiming sovereignty over Essequibo, the western part of Guyana that includes the country’s offshore oil deposits.
The Trump administration has responded aggressively to Venezuela’s territorial claims, signaling that the U.S. military will intervene if Venezuela attempts to seize any of Guyana’s territory. Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.
Claver-Carone envisioned “a greater security cooperation agreement with Guyana—almost akin to what we’re working on with some of the Gulf states.”
The Trump administration’s strategy marks a major turning point for the Caribbean. Whereas the United States had once presented the region with options for shifting away from fossil fuels, it has now abandoned that approach. The new U.S. goal is to lock the region into permanent reliance on fossil fuels, only now under a network of energy-rich countries overseen by the United States.
What the Trump administration is doing, in other words, is implementing a far more dangerous geopolitics of oil. As it moves to isolate Venezuela, it is pushing energy-dependent nations to embrace fossil fuels, regardless of the environmental consequences for the region and the world.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Memo Shows Trump Admin Targeted Mahmoud Khalil 'Solely Because It Disagrees With His Speech'
"Controversial speech is not illegal, and political speech that criticizes the Israeli government or U.S. foreign policy is constitutionally protected," said the NYCLU's interim legal director.
Apr 10, 2025
An attorney for former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil said Thursday that a memo submitted to an immigration judge shows that the U.S. government "is clearly going after Mahmoud and persecuting him for exercising his First Amendment rights."
"After a month of hiding the ball since Mahmoud's late-night unjust arrest in New York and taking him away to a remote detention center in Louisiana, immigration authorities have finally admitted that they have no case whatsoever against him," the lawyer, Marc Van Der Hout, said in a statement about a two-page memo from the U.S. Deparment of State that was published by The Associated Press.
Plainclothes federal agents accosted Khalil, a green-card holder who finished his graduate studies at Columbia last year, and his pregnant wife—Noor Abdalla, a U.S. citizen—at their building in New York City on March 8 and took him into custody. Abdalla has said that "this felt like a kidnapping because it was," and Khalil calls himself a "political prisoner."
As Van Der Hout explained Thursday: "The government has charged Mahmoud with a rarely used provision of the immigration laws targeting the deportation of even lawful permanent residents like Mahmoud—but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has provided no proof or evidence that these charges bear any viability against Mahmoud. Further, Secretary Rubio has shown that this is merely about targeting Mahmoud's free speech rights about Palestine."
"If anything, this document only underscores the startling escalation of Trump's war on dissent and efforts to remove people who disagree with him or U.S. policy."
The AP noted that "a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, did not respond to questions about whether it had additional evidence against Khalil, writing in an emailed statement, 'DHS did file evidence, but immigration court dockets are not available to the public.'"
Rubio's memo was submitted to Judge Jamee Comans ahead of an immigration court hearing scheduled for Friday in Jena, Louisiana—and after the judge said earlier this week that the federal government "either can provide sufficient evidence or not," and "if he's not removable, I'm going to terminate this case."
The memo suggests campus protests against the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were inherently discriminatory against Jewish people, stating that Rubio determined the activities and presence of Khalil and another lawful permanent resident whose name is redacted "would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest."
"These determinations are based on information... regarding the participation and roles of [redacted] and Khalil in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States," the memo continues. "The public actions and continued presence of [redacted] and Khalil in the United States undermine U.S. policy to combat antisemitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States."
Van Der Hout said that "an immigration judge would have to find that the secretary of state has 'reasonable ground' to believe that the immigrant's presence or activities in the U.S. 'would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,' and that his presence—though he has only engaged in lawful conduct that is protected by the First Amendment—'compromise[s] a compelling United States foreign policy interest,' which purportedly justifies the government's ability to override the U.S. Constitution's free speech clause. But Rubio cites no real foreign policy issues or evidence whatsoever, and it is critically important to note that the U.S. government is always constrained by the Constitution, regardless of what its officials might think."
"The two-page memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press, does not allege any criminal conduct by Khalil" "Rather, Rubio wrote Khalil could be expelled for his beliefs." Free this man immediately. apnews.com/article/mahm...
[image or embed]
— Adil Haque (@adhaque.bsky.social) April 10, 2025 at 2:13 PM
In addition to Van Der Hout's firm, Khalil is represented by Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project, New York University Immigrants' Rights Clinic, and the national, New Jersey, and New York arms of the ACLU.
Molly Biklen, interim legal director at the NYCLU, said that Rubio's memo "underscores that the government has ripped Mahmoud Khalil from his home and nine-months pregnant wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, solely because it disagrees with his speech. Controversial speech is not illegal, and political speech that criticizes the Israeli government or U.S. foreign policy is constitutionally protected."
The New York Timesreported earlier this week that under President Donald Trump, nearly 300 students have had visas revoked and could face deportation. Biklen said that "if anything, this document only underscores the startling escalation of Trump's war on dissent and efforts to remove people who disagree with him or U.S. policy. It's nothing more than a naked attack on all of our free speech rights."
Khalil's immigration case is occurring alongside a federal court battle in New Jersey, where his lawyers are arguing that he has been unlawfully detained. Referencing the latter proceedings, CCR staff attorney Samah Sisay said that the Rubio memo "shows that the secretary of state's determination that Mr. Khalil is deportable is based solely on his free speech activities as he has alleged in his habeas litigation."
"The government has not stated any legitimate foreign policy interest that is negatively impacted by Mr. Khalil but instead erroneously attributes prejudiced views to him for participating in the student encampment at Columbia University and speaking out against the United States' support of Israel's genocide in Gaza," Sisay added. "The government has not met its burden, and Mr. Khalil should be released."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular