March 31Mar 31 Here's a pretty good overview from the NYT. Basically, while non-citizens have 1st amendment protections against criminal and civil lability, they do not against deportation thanks to rulings during the 1950s red scare. Now, rounding up people and shipping them to a foreign prison with no due process = blatantly unconstitutional (unless you buy the Aliens Enemy Act argument). What they are doing with student visas and deportation? May be legal, and going to need SCOTUS to weigh in. It's wrong, but it isn't necessarily illegal. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/briefing/immigration-trump-constitution.html#:~:text=The Supreme Court has said,deportations%2C the court has found.
March 31Mar 31 36 minutes ago, Phillyterp85 said: 1) you can’t have your visa revoked for being part of a legal protest 2) there is no evidence she was part of any protest that broke any laws 3) She wrote an op ed voicing her opinion that the school should divest from companies that support Israel. So far, the government has yet to put forth any evidence that she did anything that would warrant her visa be revoked. And if it wasn’t for having access to legal representation, she would have already been deported with no due process. So once again, no, a person can’t have their student visa revoked and deported because the government doesn’t like the opinion the person expressed. That is some Banana republic 3rd world country nonsense. Again, are we talking about what the law says or what the law should be? I thought you were asking what it should be. I'm not a lawyer. Trump should follow the law. I've said that over and over again. However, people were deported under Nixon for protesting the war in Vietnam, so the 3rd world banana republic boat has already sailed.
March 31Mar 31 When the legal precedent for your actions is McCarthyism and Japanese internment camps, methinks that's a bit of a red flag.
March 31Mar 31 38 minutes ago, DrPhilly said: Let me turn this around on you and say you are playing right into the MAGA/Trump line by saying "this is only about a bunch of sheety bad foreigners". In my mind you couldn't be more wrong. No, these were people who were protesting our country. Who said how horrible Biden and Harris were and they wanted Trump. They got Trump. Quote Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?" And the snake answered, "Look, ****, you knew I was a snake."
March 31Mar 31 19 minutes ago, vikas83 said: Here's a pretty good overview from the NYT. Basically, while non-citizens have 1st amendment protections against criminal and civil lability, they do not against deportation thanks to rulings during the 1950s red scare. Now, rounding up people and shipping them to a foreign prison with no due process = blatantly unconstitutional (unless you buy the Aliens Enemy Act argument). What they are doing with student visas and deportation? May be legal, and going to need SCOTUS to weigh in. It's wrong, but it isn't necessarily illegal. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/briefing/immigration-trump-constitution.html#:~:text=The Supreme Court has said,deportations%2C the court has found. Behind a paywall. Can you paste the relevant paragraphs?
March 31Mar 31 38 minutes ago, we_gotta_believe said: Nothing in her op-ed could be classified as "pro-hamas" rhetoric, and it definitely didn't advocate for violence in any form. You could say it was anti-Israel, sure, but if you're gonna argue that's sufficient grounds for deportation, then what types of speech even is afforded protection under the 1A in your view? No it wasn't. But she was part of a larger movement that was. Think about it this way, did we lump in people who really just wanted the confederate monuments to stay up in Charlottesville with the NSDAPs marching with tiki torches screaming "Jews will not replace us". Yeah we did. Pretty much all of us did. And rightfully so.
March 31Mar 31 28 minutes ago, we_gotta_believe said: Now you're referencing asylum law reform, which is a different topic entirely. I don't think you'd have seen nearly as much push back if this is what you started with in the first place. But asylum laws have literally nothing to do with the case of a legal resident being detained and about to be deported for an innocuous op-ed she wrote on the conflict in Gaza. I think they overlap and I've said why I think so. Bottom line, I want to win. I don't think an opposition centered on fighting for the rights of foreigners protesting the universities that host them and boys playing on girl's sports teams is a winning message. That's what I'm getting at.
March 31Mar 31 3 minutes ago, Gannan said: No it wasn't. But she was part of a larger movement that was. Think about it this way, did we lump in people who really just wanted the confederate monuments to stay up in Charlottesville with the NSDAPs marching with tiki torches screaming "Jews will not replace us". Yeah we did. Pretty much all of us did. And rightfully so. What holds up in the court of public opinion may not hold up in a court of law. And I would not have been okay with charging every person with a tiki torch with the murder of Heather Heyer just because one of those nutjobs decided it was okay to run her over.
March 31Mar 31 8 minutes ago, DEagle7 said: When the legal precedent for your actions is McCarthyism and Truman's Japanese internment camps, methinks that's a bit of a red flag. I think we are going through a second round of McCarthyism that will be far worse than the first. Hopefully we don't go back to the camps, but nothing surprises me at this point.
March 31Mar 31 2 minutes ago, Gannan said: No, these were people who were protesting our country. Who said how horrible Biden and Harris were and they wanted Trump. They got Trump. Ok, you've made your position clear
March 31Mar 31 10 minutes ago, DEagle7 said: When the legal precedent for your actions is McCarthyism and Truman's Japanese internment camps, methinks that's a bit of a red flag. Roosevelt used it for internment camps, not Truman.
March 31Mar 31 2 minutes ago, Gannan said: I think they overlap Because they're both immigrants? That's like saying there's overlap between Trump and Gritty because they're both orange and incapable of feeling genuine human emotions.
March 31Mar 31 7 minutes ago, DrPhilly said: Behind a paywall. Can you paste the relevant paragraphs? Be less poor Quote The Trump administration has tried in recent weeks to deport several immigrants who spoke out against Israel. First, it arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder who’d joined pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. Officials also arrested a Georgetown University researcher with an academic visa. They deported a nephrologist at Brown University, even though she had a valid visa. Another student activist at Columbia fled to Canada after immigration officials came to her home. President Trump has said that more arrests will come — a test of the government’s ability to deport people with views that he disagrees with. How is this legal? The First Amendment, after all, protects freedom of speech in nearly absolute terms. It allows people to espouse even the most unsavory views, including support for genocide, and face no criminal penalty as a result. But Trump is taking advantage of a genuinely unsettled aspect of the law: Does the Constitution protect noncitizens’ freedom of speech? Today’s newsletter will look at the arguments. Trump’s case The Supreme Court has said that the First Amendment applies to noncitizens in the United States when it comes to criminal and civil penalties. But those protections don’t necessarily apply to deportations, the court has found. The federal government has nearly absolute power over immigration, including its ability to deport noncitizens; it gets to decide who comes and then stays in this country, potentially at the expense of constitutional rights. In 1952, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could deport immigrants for Communist Party membership without violating the First Amendment. (I experienced this firsthand: A government official asked me if I was a communist during my interview to become a U.S. citizen in the 2000s.) More specifically, administration officials cite a 1952 statute that lets the government deport immigrants, even green-card holders, for views that hamper U.S. foreign policy. The administration says that Khalil and others supported Hamas and Hezbollah, designated terrorist groups. That supposed support seems to be limited to the immigrants’ advocacy — social media posts, fliers, protests, attendance at a Hezbollah leader’s funeral. The government has not accused them of sending money or other assistance to those groups. It says that speech is enough to justify deportation. Last week, the administration leveled new accusations against Khalil. It said that he failed to disclose his membership in pro-Palestinian groups or his work for the British government when he applied for a green card. The hastily added accusations appear to be an attempt to sidestep free speech concerns about his case, my colleague Jonah Bromwich wrote. Immigrants do have due process rights, and Khalil’s case is currently going through the courts. But the administration has tried to bypass even those protections in other cases. It cited the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants without any kind of hearing in court. It claimed, but did not prove, that these migrants were members of criminal gangs supported by the Venezuelan government. The administration’s efforts to punish speech and bypass due process would be blatantly unconstitutional for a U.S. citizen. But for immigrants, the legality of the government’s actions is less certain. The opposition This approach leaves immigrants with no practical free speech rights, Nadine Strossen, former president of the A.C.L.U., told me. The First Amendment allows us to speak freely without fear of legal retribution. But if an immigrant’s political advocacy gets him deported, he does have to worry about retribution — and may choose not to speak at all. While conservatives may feel empowered now, their approach could backfire in the future. Suppose that conservative immigrants — say, Trump-supporting Venezuelans, known as MAGAzuelans — attend a Make America Great Again rally. A Democratic administration could claim that participants of the rally supported an enemy of the United States by, for example, opposing aid to Ukraine. That administration could then try to deport the immigrants for their speech. This is the slippery slope of exceptions to free speech and other constitutional rights: What counts as a violent act? What is a terrorist group? Who is an enemy of the United States? What does it mean to support them? A president can twist the answers to these questions to fit any agenda and go after people with opposing views, bypassing fundamental rights. What’s next The Supreme Court has not directly addressed the issue of immigrants’ free speech rights since the Red Scare of the 1940s and ’50s. Lower courts have, but they have been divided. As the Trump administration tests the law, the Supreme Court will likely have to chime in once again. In the meantime, immigrants have reason to worry. Already, college officials have warned immigrant students that nobody can protect them. In that sense, the Trump administration’s approach is already working: It has likely persuaded immigrants to stay quiet about causes that the president disagrees with.
March 31Mar 31 Just now, we_gotta_believe said: Because they're both immigrants? No, because they've both been losing issues for democrats. Big time. If democrats are to have any hope, they need to get back to kitchen table issues, and I don't see any of them doing that except for 83 year old Bernie Sanders.
March 31Mar 31 3 minutes ago, Gannan said: I think they overlap and I've said why I think so. Bottom line, I want to win. I don't think an opposition centered on fighting for the rights of foreigners protesting the universities that host them and boys playing on girl's sports teams is a winning message. That's what I'm getting at. I agree with you 100% here. The difference is that I'm very opinionated when it comes to freedom of speech and the right to due process. I've been defending that vital concept and not the ideas of the people involved. I'm certainly not interested in defending Palestinian protestors at universities. I think all of the posters discussing this with you were quite critical of those protests.
March 31Mar 31 2 minutes ago, vikas83 said: Be less poor meh, I just couldn't be bothered to create an account as I knew you'd paste it, thanks!
March 31Mar 31 Let me try to put this another way... Brittany Griner carried illegal drugs into a fascist dictatorship looking for any excuse to lock up Americans. Was it right that Putin threw her into a gulog for a little weed? Of course not. But it was colossally stupid for her to do. She should know what Putin is and what Russia is. Similarly, if you are a foreign Muslim woman here on a visa in Trump's America, if staying in the country is important to you, maybe don't draw a bunch of attention to yourself by publicly protesting your university. And before anyone says "Gannan comparing us to Russia just proves my point". Yes... I am. Because that's what the Trumpers want, and what we are turning into. It's what people voted for. I'm dealing with the reality. Like I said this was done before during the Vietnam war, and as Vikas pointed out, there are legal precedents for deporting them. Trump has a much stronger case for deporting protesters than he does for a 3rd term, but I fear the courts will be unable to prevent him from doing either.
March 31Mar 31 6 minutes ago, DrPhilly said: I agree with you 100% here. The difference is that I'm very opinionated when it comes to freedom of speech and the right to due process. I've been defending that vital concept and not the ideas of the people involved. I'm certainly not interested in defending Palestinian protestors at universities. I think all of the posters discussing this with you were quite critical of those protests. On the free speech thing, I think barring the AP from covering the White House for refusing to say "Gulf of America" is a much, much larger issue of free speech. But again, it maybe got 2 posts here discussing it.
March 31Mar 31 13 minutes ago, we_gotta_believe said: What holds up in the court of public opinion may not hold up in a court of law. And I would not have been okay with charging every person with a tiki torch with the murder of Heather Heyer just because one of those nutjobs decided it was okay to run her over. But the Trump administration didn't charge her with a crime.
March 31Mar 31 2 minutes ago, Gannan said: Let me try to put this another way... Brittany Griner carried illegal drugs into a fascist dictatorship looking for any excuse to lock up Americans. Was it right that Putin threw her into a gulog for a little weed? Of course not. But it was colossally stupid for her to do. She should know what Putin is and what Russia is. Similarly, if you are a foreign Muslim woman here on a visa in Trump's America, if staying in the country is important to you, maybe don't draw a bunch of attention to yourself by publicly protesting your university. And before anyone says "Gannan comparing us to Russia just proves my point". Yes... I am. Because that's what the Trumpers want, and what we are turning into. It's what people voted for. I'm dealing with the reality. Like I said this was done before during the Vietnam war, and as Vikas pointed out, there are legal precedents for deporting them. Trump has a much stronger case for deporting protesters than he does for a 3rd term, but I fear the courts will be unable to prevent him from doing either. Sure but I don't see the logic in you arguing with people who want to call out the repression. You seem to want to focus on the fact the people involved are foreigners, i.e. not my problem, while others here want to focus on the misuse of power, i.e. that same type of misuse can be applied against citizens in the future.
March 31Mar 31 11 minutes ago, vikas83 said: The Supreme Court has said that the First Amendment applies to noncitizens in the United States when it comes to criminal and civil penalties. But those protections don’t necessarily apply to deportations, the court has found. The federal government has nearly absolute power over immigration, including its ability to deport noncitizens; it gets to decide who comes and then stays in this country, potentially at the expense of constitutional rights. I'm not a lawyer, but I consider myself to be "civically engaged" and have a general knowledge of how government works, and this is how I always understood visas and how they work. That's why my position from the start was "this was to be expected" and "what did she and other protestors expect"?
March 31Mar 31 10 minutes ago, Gannan said: No, because they've both been losing issues for democrats. Big time. If democrats are to have any hope, they need to get back to kitchen table issues, and I don't see any of them doing that except for 83 year old Bernie Sanders. Appealing to the authority of Bernie Sanders is certainly one way to guarantee losses for the foreseeable future.
March 31Mar 31 5 minutes ago, Gannan said: On the free speech thing, I think barring the AP from covering the White House for refusing to say "Gulf of America" is a much, much larger issue of free speech. But again, it maybe got 2 posts here discussing it. Well no one outside the MAGA nuts was defending it so it didn't require 10 pages of posts to discuss.
March 31Mar 31 Just now, we_gotta_believe said: Appealing to the authority of Bernie Sanders is certainly one way to guarantee losses for the foreseeable future. Well, that's what I mean. It's bad. He's drawing 5 figure crowds, the dem leadership made a bunch of stupid signs. I'll appeal to the authority of the dude who waved his "pimp cane" at Trump too!
March 31Mar 31 To be clear, there are 2 scenarios here that I view as being wildly different: 1. People on visas being deported for supporting Palestine/Hamas -- I think this is morally wrong, but there is some legal justification for it. Eventually, I'm guessing SCOTUS will have to weigh in on the issue. Hopefully they won't uphold the precedent from the 1950s, but we'll see. I also agree with @Gannan that people on visas (and green cards) do need to read the room a little bit. Again, I think it is wrong and morally reprehensible to revoke a visa for simply expressing an opinion. But we may have antiquated laws and precedent that allow it, and absent Congressional action clarifying it, we all need to live with the court's decision. 2. Rounding up people and sending them to a foreign prison -- This is 100% illegal IMO as the Alien Enemies Act doesn't cover this (and also is generally viewed as an abhorrent piece of legislation that helped cost Adams a 2nd term) because we are not at war with a gang, despite the White House statement (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/invocation-of-the-alien-enemies-act-regarding-the-invasion-of-the-united-states-by-tren-de-aragua/). You can't incarcerate people based off tattoos with no due process.
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