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...
Actually according to logical people yes. This is 100% pro Hamas.
Notice these protests started immediately after a Hamas attack in support of Hamas. These protests specifically blocked anyone from discussing the hostages. Their demands were things like limiting weapon shipments to Israel etc. to weaken it while it was being attacked on multiple fronts. They avoided the "Hamas" branding but look who benefits...
The Israeli right-wing was strengthened since it pointed at "these idiots" and used global anti-sematism to rally the troops. Hamas benefited since it saw this as the collapse of international support for Israel.
Moderate Palestinians saw this as "Hamas succeeding" and moved further to the more extremist side. Moderate Israelis were essentially blocked from saying anything since the issue became: "Your either with us or with them".
They even harmed Palestinians by eroding support for Biden/Harris and strengthening Trump. It's astounding how bad and stupid these protests are/were.
These protests were not just anti-Israel, they were anti-Palestinian since they egged on Palestinians in a futile direction that would just lead to more death and pain.
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.)
It's all relevant and was prepared as part of an OP related directly to Oct 7th. Foreign influence isn't "just" against right wing supporters in Facebook by Russia. It's also against liberals.
> I also take offense at the idea that an anti-war and/or anti-genocide protest would necessarily be considered "100% pro Hamas," since you could make an identical argument about any similar protest, e.g. pro-Ukraine, anti-Vietnam-war, etc.
There are several wrong things here. First you frame this as genocide which is wrong and problematic framing. Even the ethnic cleansing framing is problematic as people went back to their homes with the deal.
No. War protests can't be framed that way. But lots of war protests do more harm than good. E.g. Nixon won his biggest election triumph in a large part thanks to the hippies.
Also you're choosing to ignore everything I said which seems inconvenient and reframe things to fit a narrative. I understand that, it's hard to see ones own biases as they are being influenced by media/foreign powers.
There's only one road that leads to a peace for the Palestinians and that's a Palestinian state. Escalating violence failed for them for the past 150+ years, these protests aren't against genocide, they're against peace.
Here are some inconvenient facts:
* A year after Oct-7th they arranged rallies in support. They knew the amount of violence/murder and the price paid yet chose to celebrate that.
* The main excuse for war is the hostages. "Protesters" don't allow hostage signage and rip out yellow ribbons. They don't want the war to end.
* From the river to the sea means death to all Jews. Yet they keep repeating that essentially escalating the violence and preventing de-escalation by supporting Israels right to exist.
A lot of the people who are part of the protests don't understand these things. They are just ignorant of the facts, history and impact. But the people pulling the strings know exactly what these protests are, and they are bad news for the Palestinians most of all.
How we can we help him get proper legal help and awareness on a regular basis? Is HN beyond sticky threads? Seems like society in general is, but ... we need sticky threads at this point.
We could assess whether there are any big organizations separate to Hn and engaged on this issue already that could do with support, instead of needlessly duplicating their efforts.
Since the administration specifically brought up "Department of State" as one of the entities that helped with the effort, my guess is the action is founded on this specific statue, not the "terrorist support" piece in particular, despite the latter being the widespread speculation:
8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(3)(C)(i) "An 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"
This provision basically lets Secretary of State to deport any alien he deems in the future might post a threat to foreign policy. It does not appear to be a difficult standard to justify either and gives Secretary of State broad leeways in deportation of all aliens, including LPRs. That said, I am not sure it even technically constitutes "revocation" of green card. They seem to be able to simply deport you with a green card without needing the procedural burden of revocation.
All the other provisions outlined for cancelation seem to involve DHS (incl. USCIS) and Attorney General to cancels one's green card, and would not really be in purview of Dept. of State.
To be very clear, we do live in a world where the distinction between legal and illegal, right and wrong, matters. And we will always live in that world.
Not to pick a fight with you. It obviously does not matter to the people running this administration, I agree with you.
All societies exist on a "law" to "rule" spectrum, what determines whether you have law or rule is who the final arbiters of justice are.
If citizens themselves are the final arbiters of justice, you ironically live in a law based society. If those with power are the final arbiters of justice, then you live in a society with rules, not laws.
The absence of law is rule by those who are most powerful. The explicit purpose of law is to prevent arbitrary wielding of power.
With this understanding he's correct, because law is an entirely self fulfilling prophecy. If GP does not wish to enforce the rule of law himself, then there is no law.
The preamble of the declaration of independence states this idea more eloquently. The person you are responding to doesn't feel any personal responsibility for protecting a law based government, and if everyone feels that way, whoever has the most power gets their way, because who is going to stop them, who will provide consequences when the legal system is a weapon of the powerful, rather than a check on power?
> If citizens themselves are the final arbiters of justice, you ironically live in a law based society
No, this is mob rule.
> who will provide consequences when the legal system is a weapon of the powerful, rather than a check on power?
This is a bad case for making this claim. While at record lows, the sympathy gap for Israel over Palestine among American voters remains in the double digits [1].
The argument you’re looking for is the judiciary’s role in protecting minority rights [2]. In overruling popular will.
I understand why you would say that, but I don't think you've thought it through, understood the point I'm making, and tried to disarm the strongest version of it possible.
Go and read the preamble to the declaration of independence, seriously. America was founded by citizens of Great Britain stating that they are the final arbiters of justice, not British courts. The British courts would have said the founding fathers are violating the law. They would have found them participating in mob rule, and they did try to put down that mob with an army.
You should answer a few questions:
(1) What is a right, and what is the relationship between law and rights. Does law grant rights, or does law protect rights?
(2) How does a government go from absolute monarchy (king is able to make all the laws and enforce them arbitrarily) to a law based society?
(3) How do you bootstrap a law based society? Can you make a law based society without breaking the law?
(4) Was the civil rights movement under MLK a form of mob rule?
You’re going off piste. I’m objecting to the claim that citizens are the final arbiters of the law. That is not a view that was held by the founders because they were studied in the history of direct democracies, the early forms of which didn’t distinguish between the citizens qua legislators and citizens qua courts.
> But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law.
> That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law
That’s an uncommon reading of that line. Citizens can throw off the government. That doesn’t make them the final arbiters of the law. (Not even legal system. One point of that sentence is you don’t get to choose which parts you throw off.)
This is a whole lot of pedantry to avoid questioning your own beliefs, which isn't surprising, because once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down, it means you have a personal responsibility to do so something if you want justice, and that's a hard reality to accept, so it's easier to live in comfortable denial.
> once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down
Justice, morals and—in my opinion—rights, yes. Even the right of the law to rule, yes. But the arbitration of the law? The particulars of its execution. No.
If the system of law is corrupted, you have to throw out the whole government. That’s why the attacks on our judiciary are so frightening. It’s really difficult to unfuck the rule of law.
> It obviously does not matter to the people running this administration, I agree with you.
How is it so obvious? What is an example where they broke a law and they continued to do so after courts ruled otherwise?
There have been a number of cases that were judicially reversed both in Trump 1.0 and 2.0. They may have non-traditional interpretations of the law, but to say they don't care about laws at all is filed under TDS. Obviously they do as it dictates the boundaries and therefore their tactics.
What the difference? Legal vs. Illegal only matters if it is enforced. If it isn't being enforced, then there is no meaningful distinction between legal and illegal.
You acknowledge that this distinction doesn't matter to our government, so why pretend that the distinction matters? We should be screaming from the rooftop that it doesn't, because it's important to understand that right now.
If the government has no interest in the rule of law to attack its people, than the people need to abandon rule of law laws to resist their government. If we keep pretending that the rules matter to us while the government doesn't even pretend that the rules matter to them, we will be destroyed.
> You acknowledge that this distinction doesn't matter to our government, so why pretend that the distinction matters? We should be screaming from the rooftop that it doesn't, because it's important to understand that right now.
We should be screaming from the rooftops that it does (or else).
While you are busy defending the status quo, people in positions of enforcement are being replaced by people who are more loyal to a man than to the law.
Once the enforcers are loyalists, it hardly matters how the courts rule.
That assumes that people exist within a shared reality influenced by facts, but people aren't connected to reality and aren't influenced by facts. We can see that with vaccinations.
The system that divorces people from reality is social media, so as long as social media is pumping un-reality into people's lives, I think you're being rather optimistic. What's happening right now is directly empowering social media oligarchs, so they have absolutely no reason to stop. The foundation of their power is un-reality.
This is what I was trying to say but wasn't sure how to say it. You can't deprogram people while they are drinking from the firehose and they have no incentive to disconnect. You would like family and friends, children cutting ties would be thing to force people to reevaluate but they just keep going as normal.
One thing to remember is that the right-wing media has been pushing absurd shibboleths for decades as well as normalizing treating other people horribly on slanderous grounds. That makes it really hard for people to come back because they have an all-you-can-eat buffet of crow. Repairing family relationships or friendships is never easy, and might not be possible after calling someone a “groomer”, “baby killer”, or “terrorist” and in so many cases it’s going to be incredibly uncomfortable to admit having done things like vote for Trump because of an urban legend or Facebook meme you could easily have checked.
It’s much easier to stay inside your bubble, where everyone else will agree with you that your kids and former friends just hate America, and avoid dwelling on it too much. If you’ve ever known someone who was in an extreme religion or abusive relationship, it’s pretty similar and the most reliable way to break the spell is some kind of outside shock which can’t be ignored. Trump might get that with the recession he’s working on but it’ll take time for people to accept that it’s real and was totally avoidable.
I just want to say that if you (the person reading) are one of those people and want to come back , we'll still be here and we'll welcome you. You don't have to agree with us on everything (nobody ever has.) We just have to agree on a few basic principles like the value of the rule of law, the Constitution, and the fact that the people currently in charge do not respect those things.
What statements did they make in support of Hamas or their actions? Forgive me for not taking that claim at face value given that literally any pro-Palestinian speech, no matter how measured, tends to get conflated with support for terrorism and/or anti-semitism. Even something as benign as wearing a keffiyeh in solidarity, which the ADLs CEO likened to wearing a swastika.
The closest to it is that the organization he represented supported resistance "by any means, including armed resistance" immediately after 7.10.23. But AFAIU they were very careful not to mention Hamas, positively or negatively.
Sure. But they have no obligation to provide it to you right now. Anyone concluding confidently before we have court filings is obviously grinding an axe. (And it’s happening on both sides. No group has a monopoly on hyperbole.)
> that is enough to revoke a green card of someone married to a US citizen?
If he’s organising support for a terrorist organisation or October 17th [EDIT: 7th], yes. If he’s just voicing support for Palestinian rights, it shouldn’t be.
The government - through the Biden and Trump admins - has been testing out the limits of student repression with pro-Palestine protestors. Think of it as a pilot program for seeing what they can get away with. As we have seen elsewhere, violent shutdown of university protests is one early step on the path towards more widespread repression.
It is fine to not care, but don’t start crying for support once your cause is on the gov’s radar.
>Last week it was reported by Axios that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intends to revoke visas from foreign nationals who are deemed to support Hamas or other terrorist groups, using artificial intelligence (AI) to pick out individuals [on social media]
Yikes. Once the government has built that infrastructure and pipeline from monitoring to arrest, you think they won't use it for other kinds of dissent?
> Why, isn't using it for this kind of dissent already enough?
We don’t know if he materially supported Hamas. At that point it’s no longer just a speech issue.
We will eventually know the government is full of bunk. But that takes time. In the meantime, I think all we can do is note who is jumping to conclusions with incomplete information and who is prescient about objective facts (not forecasts).
Very relevant in a court of law. Not really so in public opinion. I’m not saying we can conclude he deserves any of this, nor that it’s legal. I’m just saying we can’t conclude what happened was illegal without knowing the charges and evidence.
I was a non-citizen for years and felt I should hold myself to stricter conduct standards - not just for legal reasons but also moral ones. You don't ask to come into someones house and then complain about the cooking or start giving unsolicited advice on interior decorating.
I don't think they believe they can revoke his green card and deport it. If they actually can then they'll do it but what they want are the headlines and the fear.
headline is misleading, as far as anyone can tell he's been kidnapped, not arrested. allegedly, they:
- follow him in to his home
- refuse to identify themselves
- tell him his green card has been cancelled
- tell his wife they'll kidnap her too if she intervenes
- takes him somewhere
- won't tell anyone where he is, including his (8 month pregnant) wife and lawyer
allegedly they have done this because he's been loudly critical of the policies of a foreign government, which as everyone knows, is not a crime. as everyone also knows, random feds can't just kidnap you even if they think you have committed an actual crime.
Any alien (including an alien crewman) in and admitted to the United States shall, upon the order of the Attorney General, be removed if the alien is within one or more of the following classes of deportable aliens
So while you may or may not need a hearing to revoke a green card, AG Bondi seems to be able to detain and summarily remove you from the US, without the need to do a hearing to 'revoke your green card' if you fall under that statue. (Note that "immigration judges" are not real courts under judicial branch. They are under AG.)
Does it matter if he was 'arrested'? They didn't and are not following proper protocol. There was no warrant for his arrest, he's being denied his right to an attorney and are refusing to tell his representation where he is even at.
> They didn't and are not following proper protocol. There was no warrant for his arrest
Again, police don’t need a warrant with probable cause.
> he's being denied his right to an attorney
Source? His attorney is quoted in the article.
> refusing to tell his representation where he is even at
Source? The article states he’s at “an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.”
There are obvious First Amendment and free speech issues with this arrest. Those get diluted if folks start making things up about the severity of the situation.
> Again, police don’t need a warrant with probable cause.
Yes you do. You can not just barge into someones home and perform an illegal search + arrest without extreme probable cause.. And nothing they say would rise to that level of arresting someone solely on probable cause because there's no clear imminent threat of violence. They were not able to produce a warrant.
Okay then tell me: Where is he being held? Here's a quote from his attorney:
> "Currently, we do not know Mahmoud’s precise whereabouts. Initially, we were informed this morning that he had been transferred to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey," Greer added.
> "However, when his wife – a U.S. citizen who is eight months’ pregnant and was threatened with arrest as well by the ICE agents last night – tried to visit him there today, she was told he is not detained there."
I literally posted the article in my post that you responded to. Did you not read it before just jumping in to respond that you knew where he was being held?
The parallel AP article (https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khali...) says he is no longer in New Jersey and may have been moved to Louisiana. It also says (implies?) that neither his wife nor his lawyer have been in touch with him nor know where he is being kept.
> It also says (implies?) that neither his wife nor his lawyer have been in touch with him nor know where he is being kept
Thank you. This is concerning. I’ll keep an eye out for a statement from the lawyer. It may be that nobody is telling the press while the internet runs with the meme.
Feels like nobody ran an integration test, and we're about to find out that 1st amendment violations are an emergent property of a complex system riddled with accountability sinks.
The Vietnam protestors were right, so were the people who protested the Iraq invasion. And the Watergate protestors had a few good points, then there was also the Civil rights protests that were pretty beneficial in the end.
But besides all of those cases, what have the protestors ever done for us?
How do you address the argument, frequently made, that their terrorist designation is illegitimate (because terrorist is a designation given to non-state actors) and they are in fact state actors (a government of a state) engaged in war?
> How do you address the argument, frequently made, that their terrorist designation is illegitimate
Then address that directly first. Ignoring the terrorist designation and going straight to not only voicing sympathy for them but outright supporting them isn’t something we want to encourage. (Note: I do not know if this activist supported Hamas.)
They usually do. They regularly begin with saying that they are advocating for peace with a foreign country that we have supported an illegitimate invasion into and that all claims of terrorism are just propaganda.
They usually don't dispute any of the atrocities there exists evidence for, they just insist that they are military acts of war by the armed forces of the Palestinian government and that terrorism is a category error, just like the Tet Offensive.
I fully support what you’re saying. It does not line up with my experience with pro-Palestinian protestors in New York City. (Or ACAB/Defund the Police before it. Same problem, in my opinion.)
If say he sent money to hamas I might agree, but as far as the dialog / discussions surrounding Palestine and Israel these days it seems like any support for civilians on either side is inevitably presumed to be support for the worst crimes of that group's nation support for terrorism or anti antisemitism or such.
> it seems like any support for civilians on either side is inevitably presumed to be support for the worst crimes of that group's nation support for terrorism or anti antisemitism or such
Eh, I’d draw a line between someone circulating pro-Hamas or pro-Netanyahu fliers and someone speaking to the plight and the cause. And I’d draw a further line between someone trying to enact policies favourable to them (note: not which they might find favour with, that’s much broader) or sending resources their way.
My point being I have trouble understanding any of what anyone means when it comes to this topic. I’ve seen plenty of folks associate things together that don’t seem to follow.
Someone says “pro hamas”… I’m not sure what they think that is.
Yup. It’s intentionally ambiguous because you have two groups of people talking to themselves, including about how the other group perceives and portrays them. The actual interaction is sparse and frankly horrible, so instead we get two pools of thought careening under their own momentum into increasing incoherence.
We're supposed to be a nation of laws. They are not following the law in any respect for deporting a non-citizen who is 'openly supporting terrorist organizations'. Now what would you call a person supporting an action by the state that is blatantly violating the law?
>As people like to say, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
This is absolutely not the moment to evoke that argument. Freedom of speech may not protect you from social or professional consequences, it absolutely protects you from arrest or criminal charge related to matters of speech.
This situation is clearly in the realm of the government punishing someone for a matter of free speech. It is not a "consequence" it is direct legal action by the state.
And the claim that being pro-Palestine is equivalent to being pro-Hamas is complete bullshit. Why even pretend that these things are the same? You can oppose the mass-killing of civilians without endorsing the terroristic government that those people live under. The argument that being pro-Palestine is pro-Terrorism, simply because Hamas is the defacto government of Palestine, is not a valid argument given what Israel is doing to Palestinian civilians. People aren't fighting for Hamas, they are fighting against Israel's war crimes against the Palestinian people.
I didn't mention anything about Palestine or Hamas? I just gave a blanket statement saying that I support any non-citizen who openly supports a terrorist organization being deported.
Also it has always been the case that you can be deported for supporting terrorism.
Buddy, this is a discussion about an article. If your comment isn't in relation to the article, that's your issue, because everyone else is talking about the article.
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...
Did Mahmoud Khalil actually speak out in support of Hamas?
Pro-Palestinian is the same thing as pro-Hamas according to AIPAC and the administration. So according to them, yes. According to logical peoples, no,
Actually according to logical people yes. This is 100% pro Hamas.
Notice these protests started immediately after a Hamas attack in support of Hamas. These protests specifically blocked anyone from discussing the hostages. Their demands were things like limiting weapon shipments to Israel etc. to weaken it while it was being attacked on multiple fronts. They avoided the "Hamas" branding but look who benefits...
The Israeli right-wing was strengthened since it pointed at "these idiots" and used global anti-sematism to rally the troops. Hamas benefited since it saw this as the collapse of international support for Israel.
Moderate Palestinians saw this as "Hamas succeeding" and moved further to the more extremist side. Moderate Israelis were essentially blocked from saying anything since the issue became: "Your either with us or with them".
They even harmed Palestinians by eroding support for Biden/Harris and strengthening Trump. It's astounding how bad and stupid these protests are/were.
These protests were not just anti-Israel, they were anti-Palestinian since they egged on Palestinians in a futile direction that would just lead to more death and pain.
No, I recall the protests erupting shortly after Israel started annihilating Gaza and chasing the refugee population around the country.
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.
They started following this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/harvard-do...
Literally on the same day... You're thinking about the critical mass and media attention but they started way before.
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.)
It's all relevant and was prepared as part of an OP related directly to Oct 7th. Foreign influence isn't "just" against right wing supporters in Facebook by Russia. It's also against liberals.
> I also take offense at the idea that an anti-war and/or anti-genocide protest would necessarily be considered "100% pro Hamas," since you could make an identical argument about any similar protest, e.g. pro-Ukraine, anti-Vietnam-war, etc.
There are several wrong things here. First you frame this as genocide which is wrong and problematic framing. Even the ethnic cleansing framing is problematic as people went back to their homes with the deal.
No. War protests can't be framed that way. But lots of war protests do more harm than good. E.g. Nixon won his biggest election triumph in a large part thanks to the hippies.
Also you're choosing to ignore everything I said which seems inconvenient and reframe things to fit a narrative. I understand that, it's hard to see ones own biases as they are being influenced by media/foreign powers.
There's only one road that leads to a peace for the Palestinians and that's a Palestinian state. Escalating violence failed for them for the past 150+ years, these protests aren't against genocide, they're against peace.
Here are some inconvenient facts:
* A year after Oct-7th they arranged rallies in support. They knew the amount of violence/murder and the price paid yet chose to celebrate that.
* The main excuse for war is the hostages. "Protesters" don't allow hostage signage and rip out yellow ribbons. They don't want the war to end.
* From the river to the sea means death to all Jews. Yet they keep repeating that essentially escalating the violence and preventing de-escalation by supporting Israels right to exist.
A lot of the people who are part of the protests don't understand these things. They are just ignorant of the facts, history and impact. But the people pulling the strings know exactly what these protests are, and they are bad news for the Palestinians most of all.
No idea.
> quite likely to be deported (legally)
And is that what happened?
Don't know.
How we can we help him get proper legal help and awareness on a regular basis? Is HN beyond sticky threads? Seems like society in general is, but ... we need sticky threads at this point.
ADC is one organization that usually supports such cases. Here is their press release on this: https://adc.org/adc-condemns-ice-targeting-of-columbia-unive...
We could assess whether there are any big organizations separate to Hn and engaged on this issue already that could do with support, instead of needlessly duplicating their efforts.
Well I guess this is the donation for the month: https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rig...
> who claimed they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney
I thought green cards can only be revoked in rather limited circumstances. What is he accused of?
Since the administration specifically brought up "Department of State" as one of the entities that helped with the effort, my guess is the action is founded on this specific statue, not the "terrorist support" piece in particular, despite the latter being the widespread speculation:
8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(3)(C)(i) "An 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"
This provision basically lets Secretary of State to deport any alien he deems in the future might post a threat to foreign policy. It does not appear to be a difficult standard to justify either and gives Secretary of State broad leeways in deportation of all aliens, including LPRs. That said, I am not sure it even technically constitutes "revocation" of green card. They seem to be able to simply deport you with a green card without needing the procedural burden of revocation.
All the other provisions outlined for cancelation seem to involve DHS (incl. USCIS) and Attorney General to cancels one's green card, and would not really be in purview of Dept. of State.
It says it in the title, he's Palestinian. Nevermind that it's likely illegal, we don't live in a world where that matters any more.
To be very clear, we do live in a world where the distinction between legal and illegal, right and wrong, matters. And we will always live in that world.
Not to pick a fight with you. It obviously does not matter to the people running this administration, I agree with you.
That's also incorrect in a certain way.
All societies exist on a "law" to "rule" spectrum, what determines whether you have law or rule is who the final arbiters of justice are.
If citizens themselves are the final arbiters of justice, you ironically live in a law based society. If those with power are the final arbiters of justice, then you live in a society with rules, not laws.
The absence of law is rule by those who are most powerful. The explicit purpose of law is to prevent arbitrary wielding of power.
With this understanding he's correct, because law is an entirely self fulfilling prophecy. If GP does not wish to enforce the rule of law himself, then there is no law.
The preamble of the declaration of independence states this idea more eloquently. The person you are responding to doesn't feel any personal responsibility for protecting a law based government, and if everyone feels that way, whoever has the most power gets their way, because who is going to stop them, who will provide consequences when the legal system is a weapon of the powerful, rather than a check on power?
> If citizens themselves are the final arbiters of justice, you ironically live in a law based society
No, this is mob rule.
> who will provide consequences when the legal system is a weapon of the powerful, rather than a check on power?
This is a bad case for making this claim. While at record lows, the sympathy gap for Israel over Palestine among American voters remains in the double digits [1].
The argument you’re looking for is the judiciary’s role in protecting minority rights [2]. In overruling popular will.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/american-support-israel-hits-record...
[2] https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/_file/Ross/Chapter_Five.pdf
> No, this is mob rule.
I understand why you would say that, but I don't think you've thought it through, understood the point I'm making, and tried to disarm the strongest version of it possible.
Go and read the preamble to the declaration of independence, seriously. America was founded by citizens of Great Britain stating that they are the final arbiters of justice, not British courts. The British courts would have said the founding fathers are violating the law. They would have found them participating in mob rule, and they did try to put down that mob with an army.
You should answer a few questions:
(1) What is a right, and what is the relationship between law and rights. Does law grant rights, or does law protect rights?
(2) How does a government go from absolute monarchy (king is able to make all the laws and enforce them arbitrarily) to a law based society?
(3) How do you bootstrap a law based society? Can you make a law based society without breaking the law?
(4) Was the civil rights movement under MLK a form of mob rule?
You’re going off piste. I’m objecting to the claim that citizens are the final arbiters of the law. That is not a view that was held by the founders because they were studied in the history of direct democracies, the early forms of which didn’t distinguish between the citizens qua legislators and citizens qua courts.
> But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law.
> That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law
That’s an uncommon reading of that line. Citizens can throw off the government. That doesn’t make them the final arbiters of the law. (Not even legal system. One point of that sentence is you don’t get to choose which parts you throw off.)
This is a whole lot of pedantry to avoid questioning your own beliefs, which isn't surprising, because once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down, it means you have a personal responsibility to do so something if you want justice, and that's a hard reality to accept, so it's easier to live in comfortable denial.
> once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down
Justice, morals and—in my opinion—rights, yes. Even the right of the law to rule, yes. But the arbitration of the law? The particulars of its execution. No.
If the system of law is corrupted, you have to throw out the whole government. That’s why the attacks on our judiciary are so frightening. It’s really difficult to unfuck the rule of law.
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> It obviously does not matter to the people running this administration, I agree with you.
How is it so obvious? What is an example where they broke a law and they continued to do so after courts ruled otherwise?
There have been a number of cases that were judicially reversed both in Trump 1.0 and 2.0. They may have non-traditional interpretations of the law, but to say they don't care about laws at all is filed under TDS. Obviously they do as it dictates the boundaries and therefore their tactics.
What the difference? Legal vs. Illegal only matters if it is enforced. If it isn't being enforced, then there is no meaningful distinction between legal and illegal.
You acknowledge that this distinction doesn't matter to our government, so why pretend that the distinction matters? We should be screaming from the rooftop that it doesn't, because it's important to understand that right now.
If the government has no interest in the rule of law to attack its people, than the people need to abandon rule of law laws to resist their government. If we keep pretending that the rules matter to us while the government doesn't even pretend that the rules matter to them, we will be destroyed.
> You acknowledge that this distinction doesn't matter to our government, so why pretend that the distinction matters? We should be screaming from the rooftop that it doesn't, because it's important to understand that right now.
We should be screaming from the rooftops that it does (or else).
> If the government has no interest in the rule of law to attack its people
We got here in part due to this brand of lazy nihilism.
Courts are restraining Trump. It takes time. But they’re doing it, all the way up to SCOTUS. Trump remains popular, but it’s slowly eroding.
Want to know what nukes all of that? A couple of idiots going out on a joy riot.
While you are busy defending the status quo, people in positions of enforcement are being replaced by people who are more loyal to a man than to the law.
Once the enforcers are loyalists, it hardly matters how the courts rule.
Trump being popular is insane in itself.
People take time to admit they fucked up. And the effects of his policies haven’t yet manifested widely for the people who support him.
That assumes that people exist within a shared reality influenced by facts, but people aren't connected to reality and aren't influenced by facts. We can see that with vaccinations.
The system that divorces people from reality is social media, so as long as social media is pumping un-reality into people's lives, I think you're being rather optimistic. What's happening right now is directly empowering social media oligarchs, so they have absolutely no reason to stop. The foundation of their power is un-reality.
Hope is not a strategy.
This is what I was trying to say but wasn't sure how to say it. You can't deprogram people while they are drinking from the firehose and they have no incentive to disconnect. You would like family and friends, children cutting ties would be thing to force people to reevaluate but they just keep going as normal.
One thing to remember is that the right-wing media has been pushing absurd shibboleths for decades as well as normalizing treating other people horribly on slanderous grounds. That makes it really hard for people to come back because they have an all-you-can-eat buffet of crow. Repairing family relationships or friendships is never easy, and might not be possible after calling someone a “groomer”, “baby killer”, or “terrorist” and in so many cases it’s going to be incredibly uncomfortable to admit having done things like vote for Trump because of an urban legend or Facebook meme you could easily have checked.
It’s much easier to stay inside your bubble, where everyone else will agree with you that your kids and former friends just hate America, and avoid dwelling on it too much. If you’ve ever known someone who was in an extreme religion or abusive relationship, it’s pretty similar and the most reliable way to break the spell is some kind of outside shock which can’t be ignored. Trump might get that with the recession he’s working on but it’ll take time for people to accept that it’s real and was totally avoidable.
I just want to say that if you (the person reading) are one of those people and want to come back , we'll still be here and we'll welcome you. You don't have to agree with us on everything (nobody ever has.) We just have to agree on a few basic principles like the value of the rule of law, the Constitution, and the fact that the people currently in charge do not respect those things.
The title does not say that
You're right updated
Supporting a terrorist organization is legal grounds. Section 237 of the INA.
Which judge ruled on his case? I can’t seem to find it.
It's not based on legal precedent, it's right in the code. It was part of the "Immigration and Nationality Act", which most people refer to as "INA".
You still need a judge to rule that he in fact broke the law. (Specifically an immigration judge.)
Misread "his" for "this". He's only just been detained, I don't imagine a hearing has happened that fast.
They didn’t. No ruling exists. This dude was just black bagged.
Making statements in support of or in support of the actions of a proscribed terrorist group.
What statements did they make in support of Hamas or their actions? Forgive me for not taking that claim at face value given that literally any pro-Palestinian speech, no matter how measured, tends to get conflated with support for terrorism and/or anti-semitism. Even something as benign as wearing a keffiyeh in solidarity, which the ADLs CEO likened to wearing a swastika.
The closest to it is that the organization he represented supported resistance "by any means, including armed resistance" immediately after 7.10.23. But AFAIU they were very careful not to mention Hamas, positively or negatively.
Is being a "Palestinian activist" that?
This argument would be stronger if either of you had sources showing what he has or categorically hasn’t done.
Hard to prove “hasn’t done.”
I’ll leave it to folks saying he has done something to prove it.
> Hard to prove “hasn’t done.”
Even a statement is fine. The point is this argument is vacuous if both sides assume intent.
> I’ll leave it to folks saying he has done something to prove it
Sure. They do that in court filings. It just takes time. (And maybe it’s all bunk!)
Statement what?
I think it is kinda an insidious system where it is expected we would have a statement vs any possible bad thing.
I’m all for innocent until proven guilty. If this guy mailed a check to hamas directly then fine by me, otherwise I say prove it.
> otherwise I say prove it
Sure. But they have no obligation to provide it to you right now. Anyone concluding confidently before we have court filings is obviously grinding an axe. (And it’s happening on both sides. No group has a monopoly on hyperbole.)
And that is enough to revoke a green card of someone married to a US citizen?
> that is enough to revoke a green card of someone married to a US citizen?
If he’s organising support for a terrorist organisation or October 17th [EDIT: 7th], yes. If he’s just voicing support for Palestinian rights, it shouldn’t be.
I would hope so
Allegedly.
The government - through the Biden and Trump admins - has been testing out the limits of student repression with pro-Palestine protestors. Think of it as a pilot program for seeing what they can get away with. As we have seen elsewhere, violent shutdown of university protests is one early step on the path towards more widespread repression.
It is fine to not care, but don’t start crying for support once your cause is on the gov’s radar.
This isn't the UK
>Last week it was reported by Axios that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intends to revoke visas from foreign nationals who are deemed to support Hamas or other terrorist groups, using artificial intelligence (AI) to pick out individuals [on social media]
Yikes. Once the government has built that infrastructure and pipeline from monitoring to arrest, you think they won't use it for other kinds of dissent?
> you think they won't use it for other kinds of dissent?
Why, isn't using it for this kind of dissent already enough? There's no freedom of speech anymore in the US if you go against the interests of Israel.
> Why, isn't using it for this kind of dissent already enough?
We don’t know if he materially supported Hamas. At that point it’s no longer just a speech issue.
We will eventually know the government is full of bunk. But that takes time. In the meantime, I think all we can do is note who is jumping to conclusions with incomplete information and who is prescient about objective facts (not forecasts).
> We don’t know if he materially supported Hamas. At that point it’s no longer just a speech issue.
What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
> What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Very relevant in a court of law. Not really so in public opinion. I’m not saying we can conclude he deserves any of this, nor that it’s legal. I’m just saying we can’t conclude what happened was illegal without knowing the charges and evidence.
If you are based in the US, you should protest this hard.
In Germany, they came for the communists first.
https://hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin...
Network state in full swing.
That infrastructure has always existed. The law 9 FAM 302.6 lays out grounds for inadmissibility.
It’s similar to the laws that prevent former Nazi regime members from immigrating to the US.
As a non-citizen, you are held to more strict standards as to your conduct. Every country does this.
I was a non-citizen for years and felt I should hold myself to stricter conduct standards - not just for legal reasons but also moral ones. You don't ask to come into someones house and then complain about the cooking or start giving unsolicited advice on interior decorating.
Of course they won’t /s
I don't think they believe they can revoke his green card and deport it. If they actually can then they'll do it but what they want are the headlines and the fear.
headline is misleading, as far as anyone can tell he's been kidnapped, not arrested. allegedly, they:
- follow him in to his home
- refuse to identify themselves
- tell him his green card has been cancelled
- tell his wife they'll kidnap her too if she intervenes
- takes him somewhere
- won't tell anyone where he is, including his (8 month pregnant) wife and lawyer
allegedly they have done this because he's been loudly critical of the policies of a foreign government, which as everyone knows, is not a crime. as everyone also knows, random feds can't just kidnap you even if they think you have committed an actual crime.
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Only after a hearing before a judge. The State Department does not have the legal authority to revoke Green Cards.
8 U.S.C. §1227 stipulates:
Any alien (including an alien crewman) in and admitted to the United States shall, upon the order of the Attorney General, be removed if the alien is within one or more of the following classes of deportable aliens
So while you may or may not need a hearing to revoke a green card, AG Bondi seems to be able to detain and summarily remove you from the US, without the need to do a hearing to 'revoke your green card' if you fall under that statue. (Note that "immigration judges" are not real courts under judicial branch. They are under AG.)
Have they revoked it? I thought he’s just been arrested. That’s something various police forces within State absolutely can do with probably cause.
ICE agents told his lawyer (in a phone call while he was being arrested) that it had been revoked
Does it matter if he was 'arrested'? They didn't and are not following proper protocol. There was no warrant for his arrest, he's being denied his right to an attorney and are refusing to tell his representation where he is even at.
> They didn't and are not following proper protocol. There was no warrant for his arrest
Again, police don’t need a warrant with probable cause.
> he's being denied his right to an attorney
Source? His attorney is quoted in the article.
> refusing to tell his representation where he is even at
Source? The article states he’s at “an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.”
There are obvious First Amendment and free speech issues with this arrest. Those get diluted if folks start making things up about the severity of the situation.
> There are obvious First Amendment and free speech issues with this arrest.
Unlikely. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harisiades_v._Shaughnessy
> Again, police don’t need a warrant with probable cause.
Yes you do. You can not just barge into someones home and perform an illegal search + arrest without extreme probable cause.. And nothing they say would rise to that level of arresting someone solely on probable cause because there's no clear imminent threat of violence. They were not able to produce a warrant.
> Source? His attorney is quoted in the article.
https://bsky.app/profile/premthakker.bsky.social/post/3ljxt6... [1]
It takes all of five minutes to get the latest update. His attorney does not know where he's being held and no one is allowed to visit him.
[1] https://www.foxnews.com/us/ice-agents-arrest-anti-israel-act... (the related Fox News article)
> Yes you do. You can not just barge into someones home and perform an illegal search + arrest
Search and arrest, yes. If police see probable cause to arrest from the street, they can arrest.
> because there's no clear imminent threat of violence
Violence is unnecessary. If you’re caught shoplifting, the cop can arrest you without a warrant even if you weren’t violent.
> His attorney does not know where he's being held and no one is allowed to visit him
The tweet is from 9 hours ago. (Who is the source?)
The article is newer. We know where he is.
> The article is newer. We know where he is.
Okay then tell me: Where is he being held? Here's a quote from his attorney:
> "Currently, we do not know Mahmoud’s precise whereabouts. Initially, we were informed this morning that he had been transferred to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey," Greer added.
> "However, when his wife – a U.S. citizen who is eight months’ pregnant and was threatened with arrest as well by the ICE agents last night – tried to visit him there today, she was told he is not detained there."
Where are you getting these quotes? From when?
I literally posted the article in my post that you responded to. Did you not read it before just jumping in to respond that you knew where he was being held?
So it’s the same hours-old quote?
The parallel AP article (https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khali...) says he is no longer in New Jersey and may have been moved to Louisiana. It also says (implies?) that neither his wife nor his lawyer have been in touch with him nor know where he is being kept.
> It also says (implies?) that neither his wife nor his lawyer have been in touch with him nor know where he is being kept
Thank you. This is concerning. I’ll keep an eye out for a statement from the lawyer. It may be that nobody is telling the press while the internet runs with the meme.
Feels like nobody ran an integration test, and we're about to find out that 1st amendment violations are an emergent property of a complex system riddled with accountability sinks.
How do we measure sympathy?
That sounds like a thought crime.
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The Vietnam protestors were right, so were the people who protested the Iraq invasion. And the Watergate protestors had a few good points, then there was also the Civil rights protests that were pretty beneficial in the end.
But besides all of those cases, what have the protestors ever done for us?
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How do you address the argument, frequently made, that their terrorist designation is illegitimate (because terrorist is a designation given to non-state actors) and they are in fact state actors (a government of a state) engaged in war?
> How do you address the argument, frequently made, that their terrorist designation is illegitimate
Then address that directly first. Ignoring the terrorist designation and going straight to not only voicing sympathy for them but outright supporting them isn’t something we want to encourage. (Note: I do not know if this activist supported Hamas.)
They usually do. They regularly begin with saying that they are advocating for peace with a foreign country that we have supported an illegitimate invasion into and that all claims of terrorism are just propaganda.
They usually don't dispute any of the atrocities there exists evidence for, they just insist that they are military acts of war by the armed forces of the Palestinian government and that terrorism is a category error, just like the Tet Offensive.
I fully support what you’re saying. It does not line up with my experience with pro-Palestinian protestors in New York City. (Or ACAB/Defund the Police before it. Same problem, in my opinion.)
Tbf, literacy rates are down
I disagree with that argument entirely.
Every land territory on Earth that is claimed by at least one government also has a government, correct?
Either Palestine has a government of its own or Palestine is a part of Israel.
>openly support terrorist organizations
If say he sent money to hamas I might agree, but as far as the dialog / discussions surrounding Palestine and Israel these days it seems like any support for civilians on either side is inevitably presumed to be support for the worst crimes of that group's nation support for terrorism or anti antisemitism or such.
> it seems like any support for civilians on either side is inevitably presumed to be support for the worst crimes of that group's nation support for terrorism or anti antisemitism or such
Eh, I’d draw a line between someone circulating pro-Hamas or pro-Netanyahu fliers and someone speaking to the plight and the cause. And I’d draw a further line between someone trying to enact policies favourable to them (note: not which they might find favour with, that’s much broader) or sending resources their way.
My point being I have trouble understanding any of what anyone means when it comes to this topic. I’ve seen plenty of folks associate things together that don’t seem to follow.
Someone says “pro hamas”… I’m not sure what they think that is.
Yup. It’s intentionally ambiguous because you have two groups of people talking to themselves, including about how the other group perceives and portrays them. The actual interaction is sparse and frankly horrible, so instead we get two pools of thought careening under their own momentum into increasing incoherence.
Yeah that’s what I’ve experienced for sure.
We're supposed to be a nation of laws. They are not following the law in any respect for deporting a non-citizen who is 'openly supporting terrorist organizations'. Now what would you call a person supporting an action by the state that is blatantly violating the law?
It has ALWAYS been the case that non-citizens who endorse terrorist activities can be deported from the US.
https://www.uscis.gov/laws-and-policy/other-resources/terror...
>As people like to say, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
This is absolutely not the moment to evoke that argument. Freedom of speech may not protect you from social or professional consequences, it absolutely protects you from arrest or criminal charge related to matters of speech.
This situation is clearly in the realm of the government punishing someone for a matter of free speech. It is not a "consequence" it is direct legal action by the state.
And the claim that being pro-Palestine is equivalent to being pro-Hamas is complete bullshit. Why even pretend that these things are the same? You can oppose the mass-killing of civilians without endorsing the terroristic government that those people live under. The argument that being pro-Palestine is pro-Terrorism, simply because Hamas is the defacto government of Palestine, is not a valid argument given what Israel is doing to Palestinian civilians. People aren't fighting for Hamas, they are fighting against Israel's war crimes against the Palestinian people.
I didn't mention anything about Palestine or Hamas? I just gave a blanket statement saying that I support any non-citizen who openly supports a terrorist organization being deported.
Also it has always been the case that you can be deported for supporting terrorism.
https://www.uscis.gov/laws-and-policy/other-resources/terror...
Buddy, this is a discussion about an article. If your comment isn't in relation to the article, that's your issue, because everyone else is talking about the article.
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