Mahmoud Khalil is a test case for US fascism

The Trump administration’s arrest and intended deportation of the student activist aims to eviscerate the First Amendment, and to do so on behalf of a foreign country. Defeating it is crucial.

My latest article on my website, The Case of Mahmoud Khalil: Trump Aims to Destroy the First Amendment and Deport Legal Residents to Defend a Genocide, is my assessment of the almost inestimably important case of Mahmoud Khalil, the legal US resident abducted on March 8 and taken to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana for deportation.

Targeted for his involvement in student protests at Columbia University against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Khalid’s abduction and his intended deportation are a glaring example of the Trump administration’s intention to shred the First Amendment to support Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza, although they are framing it as a “national security” matter.

The Secretary of State, the pliant and dim-witted Marco Rubio, seeks to justify Khalil’s deportation by invoking a barely-used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952, which gives him the authority to deport non-citizens if he has "reasonable ground to believe that [their] presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

If successful, the Trump administration will be able to deport any green card holder or visa holder who has engaged in any kind of non-violent opposition to Israel’s genocide, a startling development which would not only formally make the US into a dictatorship, in which freedom of speech (or even thought) is not allowed; it would also do so in the service of a foreign country, Israel.

This is a position that, as I describe it, “lays bare how the Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, prioritizes Israel’s interests over its own, in what really ought to be seen as a betrayal of America’s self-interest — or even as an act of treason.”

Although an immigration judge rubber-stamped Khalil’s deportation on Friday, a legal challenge is ongoing in federal court in New Jersey, and we must all hope that it is successful, although it seems certain that it will be a protracted process that will last for many years. Its importance, however, cannot be underestimated. As I say, “It's no exaggeration to say that the future of the US depends on it.”

Help me mark 8,500 days of Guantánamo’s existence

This Saturday, April 19, the Bush administration’s “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, maintained by every president since, will have been open for 8,500 days.

Please help, via the Close Guantánamo campaign that I established over 13 years ago, to mark this grim and unforgivable milestone by taking a photo with the poster marking 8,500 days, and sending it to info@closeguantanamo.org.

I’ve been running the photo campaign for the last seven years, with a poster every 100 days, and, for inspiration, see the wonderful collection of photos from 8,400 days, in January, here, and the photos from last year here and here.

Photos marking 8,400 days of Guantánamo’s existence, in January.

A new live video from my band The Four Fathers

Please also, if you’re inclined, check out the live video of my band The Four Fathers playing our eco-anthem ‘This Time We Win’, recorded at launch of our new album, ’Songs of Loss and Resistance’, in Deptford at the end of last year. You can also check out the studio version, recorded with the great Charlie Hart on piano, here.

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