A few weeks ago, I asked a good friend who is in the United States on a green card if he might be willing to be interviewed about a controversial Trump administration policy involving the country of his birth. Normally voluble on all things political, especially those touching on his homeland, he demurred. He had his citizenship interview coming up, he explained. Best not to risk it.
At the time, I wondered if he was being a bit too cautious: Permanent residents have legal rights, after all, including the right to free speech enshrined under the First Amendment. How could an interview possibly harm his citizenship application?
After the detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the weekend of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist of Palestinian origin who was a student organizer of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University, it is clear that I was the one being naive. Of course the Trump administration would weaponize immigration proceedings to punish speech it did not like.
Khalil, who graduated from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December, not only has a green card; his wife, who is eight months pregnant, is also an American citizen. He was a prominent leader of the campus protests against the war in the Gaza Strip, but there is no public indication that he has been charged with a crime.
It is impossible to overstate how chilling this detention is. If it is allowed to stand, what stops the Trump administration from detaining and ultimately expelling permanent residents who support any cause it does not like? Ukrainians, dissident Russians, Kurds, Sikh separatists, anti-Zionist Jews — all could be at risk simply for what they believe. Any permanent resident — a German who protests U.S. climate policy, a Nigerian who marches against police violence targeting Black people, a Spaniard advocating transgender rights — would have to think carefully before exercising the constitutionally protected right to free speech.
It is especially troubling that Khalil’s arrest happened in the context of a university. U.S. higher education competes to attract the very brightest foreign students, who are drawn to the dynamism and opportunity the U.S. education system and economy provide. They are a crucial component of American competitiveness, but not immune to concerns about funding, politics, uncertainty and the welcome extended to foreigners (or lack of it).
On Monday, I called my friend who was awaiting his citizenship interview, and he shared the news that he had passed the interview and been naturalized. Still, he did not feel safe to share his name or country of origin — he does not yet have his new passport in hand. He called the Trump administration’s demonizing and defunding of universities “a kind of vandalism — it is the American Taliban blowing up the Bamiyan sculptures.”
The Trump administration has been savvy in choosing unpopular targets: dismantling foreign aid, targeting transgender people, demonizing migrants and trashing elite colleges. Each of these moves chips away at bedrock American ideals. But free speech is not merely an ideal. There is a reason it is enshrined in the very first amendment of the Constitution. It is the foundation of our system of government, the most important condition of its existence. To lose it is to lose democracy itself.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
