Speak out while you can by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

As I imagine you know by now, pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested in New York on Saturday night and told his green card had been revoked. No charges were pressed at the time he was handcuffed and put into an unmarked car, and still haven’t. His family had trouble tracking down where he was taken. He is now in a detention center in Louisiana. It is widely reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is using a provision of the McCarran Walter Act (a 1952 law that originally targeted Jewish Holocaust survivors) as justification.

In Robert Reich’s Substack this morning, The Trump regime will arrest some of you in the middle of the night because you spoke your mind, he writes:

I’m incredibly freaked out about the regime grabbing people from their homes who are legally in the United States, with permanent status — not just visas permitting them to work or study here but green cards — and then whisking them away to prison because they’ve engaged in constitutionally protected speech that the regime doesn’t like.

This afternoon, the headline in The Forward reads Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest is a shanda for democracy (and, yes, for Jews). (For those of you who don’t know any Yiddish, a shanda is a shame.) The Forward’s Senior Columnist Rob Eshman writes:

The McCarran Act does not give the government far-reaching powers to revoke the rights of permanent residents at will. Instead, the law states the authorities must reasonably determine that the person’s presence in the U.S. poses serious adverse consequences to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.

That leaves room for judicial review, not a midnight knock on the door and one-way ticket to a holding center where neither your lawyer nor your family can reach you.

This is not about Mahmoud Kahlil’s politics. As Senator Chris Murphy said in a video released to social media, ‘Today It’s Mahmoud Khalil—Tomorrow It’s Me Or You.’

In dictatorship, they call this practice “being disappeared.” No charges, no claims of criminal behavior — the White House doesn’t claim he did anything criminal. He’s in jail because of his political speech. And here’s why everybody should care: In America, your political speech is protected, whether or not the president likes what you say… But if you’re disloyal to Trump, or you’re organizing against Trump’s political agenda, your speech could be criminalized. You could find yourself in jail…

Even if you are a hardened Trump supporter, this practice should cross the line for you. Even if you disagree with Khalil’s views, this practice should cross the line for you. This has nothing to do with supporting Trump. This is about supporting an American value, maybe the most important American value — protecting free speech, even if it’s speech you disagree with.

In her video, Make a call for freedom of speech, Jess Craven gives us a script and the phone number of the Capitol switchboard, 202-224-3121.

I am calling to urge the Senator/Congressmember to publicly condemn the Trump administration’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and demand his immediate release. This is a clear violation of human rights and an alarming sign of growing authoritarianism. It isn’t an accident that the U.S. has just been added to the Human Rights watchlist. Actions like this are why. Will the Senator/Congressmember issue a public statement condemning this unlawful arrest and take all actions necessary to ensure Khalil’s immediate release? Or does freedom of speech only apply when it’s a Republican speaking? I’d like a response in writing please. Thanks.

For all kinds of reasons, I am, as Robert Reich put it, incredibly freaked out by this. If we don’t push back now, the time will soon come when we won’t be able to.

I’ll give Rachel Maddow the last word: “Don’t let anyone tell you that pushback doesn’t matter.”