What next from Trump’s unlawful bag? When Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student was arrested and detained by Homeland Security, it is still not clear why he was apprehended and dispatched to a jail in Louisiana. Khalil possesses a green card and is therefore a permanent resident. But of course, as we know so well, Trump thinks he needs no justification for such illegality.
Maybe they can place Khalil in the same category of the 200 Venezuelans, allegedly gang members, rounded up and shipped off to jails in El Salvador. They were hustled out of the country based on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, back when the U.S. government believed a war with France was imminent.
During World War II, the Act was invoked and people of German, Italian, and Japanese ancestry were imprisoned without trial, most egregiously the Japanese citizens.
Related: OP-ED: Can we say Trumpism?
There is no current danger of war, and certainly not with these Latin American countries or Palestinians, but in Trump’s convoluted worldview and rule of lawlessness, that’s of no consequence. The gang of Venezeulans, in Trump’s estimation constituted a threat, “an invasion” against the U.S., and thus are “liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.”
Arresting Khalil has sent a chilling effect to activists across the nation, particularly those determined to express their outrage on the conflict in the Middle East and the devastation of Gaza.
And his unlawful detainment raises concerns about the safety of other permanent residents and citizens expressing their constitutional rights. All these Orwellian moves by Trump and his appeal to the Supreme Court to allow restrictions on birthright citizenship, may be an ominous step toward denying the automatic citizenship of children born in the U.S. It could even portend the evisceration of the 14th Amendment and the rights of Black Americans.