Of all the things that make America great – and despite my liberal politics, I do believe there are many great things about my homeland – the First Amendment to our constitution may be the greatest. It promises broad freedoms to speak without penalty, to assemble in protest, and to engage in religious practice without coercion. Today these concepts are not exactly revelatory. But when the US constitution was penned, they were – and in parts of the world today, such freedoms don’t exist.
This is why it’s so horrifying to see parts of the Maga movement tearing up a founding document of such greatness. Earlier this month, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials detained former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, and a green card holder who is married to an American citizen and expecting their first child. Khalil was arrested at his home in New York and moved to a detention centre in Louisiana. He is not accused of any crime; in fact a White House official told the Free Press that “the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law”. Instead, the Trump administration is supposedly trying to deport him because it doesn’t like the content of his speech. Its argument is that, by protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza, Khalil is undermining the US’s national security interest in fighting anti-Semitism. Has Khalil engaged in any anti-Semitic acts or made any anti-Semitic statements? The administration has yet to produce any evidence for this.
Content from our partners
