Basically if you're not White, you're unsafe?? For example, this Palestinian

[theking]

 :

Trump vowed to pursue undocumented immigrants. Now legal immigrants are targets, too.

Trump's arrest of Columbia student marks new turn in immigration crackdown debate
The arrest of a Palestinian graduate student who represented anti-Israel protests at Columbia University marks a significant shift for the U.S. government, even from an administration that has prioritized cracking down on both immigration and campus anti-war protests.

Mahmoud Khalil, who enraged conservatives with his central role in campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war, both entered the U.S. legally as a student and had legal permanent status as a green card holder — making his arrest over the weekend by immigration agents a radical departure in enforcement that is already facing legal challenges and causing widespread outrage.

President Donald Trump vowed during the campaign to deport foreign students who participated in the protests over the war in Gaza. But his immigration rhetoric over the last year focused more on removing undocumented immigrants from the country — particularly those who have committed crimes — than those immigrants living here with legal status. The administration’s announcement that it will revoke the protesters’ visas and green cards and deport them marked a rhetorical turn and a major escalation.

Some Democrats who have treaded carefully around immigration enforcement since the election see an open door in the Khalil case. Khalil is also married to a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant, potentially eliciting broader sympathy.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee — led by Sen. **** Durbin (D-Ill.), the second highest ranking Democrat in the chamber — called Khalil’s detention “Straight up authoritariani sm.”

Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, said she was “extremely concerned” about the arrest and that her office is monitoring the situation. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, said “This is straight out of the fascist playbook.” And Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller who is running for mayor against incumbent Eric Adams, called the arrest an “unconstitutional and egregious violation of the First Amendment, and a frightening weaponization of immigration law.”

Khalil’s attorney told The Associated Press she was unaware of Khalil’s location on Sunday night. An online locator run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed Khalil being detained Sunday at an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. By Monday, it showed him being held at another ICE detention center in Jena, Louisiana.

The arrest also concerned some Republicans who have condemned the campus protests — as well as those who are supporters of Trump’s plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter posted on X that there is “almost no one I don’t want to deport, but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the first amendment?”

Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and State Department appointee in Trump’s first administration, told POLITICO “These are very, very dangerous waters for Secretary [Marco Rubio] to assert himself in,” referencing Rubio’s post that said the administration would revoke the visas and green cards of “Hamas supporters.”

“We are the party of ‘Why did Elon Musk buy Twitter? For free speech.’ Now we’re going to start playing around,” he added.

Free speech has been a Trump administration talking point, with Vice President JD Vance slamming European laws and social media platforms for “censorship” and chilling right-leaning voices. “I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people,” Vance said last month in Munich.

The Trump administration has also waded into murky legal territory. The Department of Homeland Security, as it did in Khalil’s case, is authorized to arrest and initiate deportation proceedings against green card holders, including for certain criminal convictions. But only a judge can take away a person’s permanent residence status.

On Monday, a federal judge in New York handling a habeas corpus petition filed on Khalil’s behalf ordered that he not be removed from the U.S. pending further order of the court. Khalil’s lawyers are asking the judge that Khalil be returned to New York.

“One of the most disturbing features of what has happened here is that the administration has not been transparent about the grounds that they have relied on to revoke Khalil’s green card,” said Ramya Krishnan, a senior staff attorney at Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute. “They haven’t pointed to any crimes that he was convicted of. They haven’t articulated the specific statutory authority they’re relying on here.”

Krishnan noted that the extraordinary action “will have the effect of chilling the kinds of student protests that this administration has threatened to retaliate against since the very beginning,” adding that the “political deportation” hearkens back to “repressive moments in America’s history,” such as the McCarthy era.

Trump officials, including border czar Tom Homan, claim Khalil violated the terms of his visa by supporting Hamas — a designated terrorist organization. But Khalil has never been charged with or convicted of any crimes.

“Did he violate the terms of his visa? Did he violate the terms of his residency? Committing crimes, attacking Israeli students, locking down buildings, destroying property, absolutely any resident alien that commits a crime is eligible for deportation,” Homan said on Fox News. “And that’s just one of many.”

Khalil’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Khalil told Al Jazeera that he was concerned joining the protesters could jeopardize his immigration status, so he decided instead to act as the lead negotiator between the student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and members of the Columbia administration . “Since the beginning, I decided to stay out of the public eye and away from media attention or high-risk activities,” he told the outlet. “I considered the encampment to be ‘high risk.’”

Columbia briefly suspended Khalil before rescinding the suspension, according to Al Jazeera. He said the university president’s office even called him to apologize.

Trump on Monday called Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” and said his arrest was the “first arrest of many to come” and that “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.” He added, without evidence, that “Many are not students, they are paid agitators” — a longstanding, but inaccurate, talking point among critics.

CUAD, a coalition of dozens of student groups that includes much of Columbia’s undergraduate student body, has continuously maintained that it is anti-Zionist, but not antisemitic. Some of its leaders identify as anti-Zionist Jews. The group has not explicitly endorsed Hamas, but a POLITICO analysis found that some members had engaged with pro-Hamas content via a web of channels on an encrypted messaging app.

The GOP’s 2024 platform, which Trump and his team played a major role in shaping, calls for “revoking Visas of Foreign Nationals who support terrorism and jihadism” and to “DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS.” So does “Project Esther,” a Heritage Foundation blueprint to “combat antisemitism,” which equates the “pro-Palestinian movement” with a “Hamas Support Network” and calls on “pro-Palestinian” university faculty and staff to be fired, and students to lose their visas and be deported.

Trump has long railed against the high-profile, anti-war protests at universities across the country in the months after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. He announced a federal task force on antisemitism to visit 10 college campuses that had antisemitic incidents since the attacks and pulled $400 million in funding from Columbia last week.

“Let me be very clear to all those individuals who are defending this individual: A student visa is a privilege,” Leo Terrell, who heads the administration’s antisemitism task force, told Fox News on Monday. “Yes, you’ll get your day before an immigration judge, but it can be revoked. So I want these individuals who are practicing antisemitic behavior, if you are an individual on a student visa, you’re not an American citizen, you’re a foreign national. And you can expect deportation proceedings or revocation of your right to attend a prestigious university in the great country of America.”

When students at Columbia erected tents on a campus lawn last April and declared it the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” they thrust the Manhattan university into the eye of a political firestorm. Members of Congress descended on the Ivy League school, with some progressive “Squad” members joining student protesters while both Democrats and Republicans slammed what they claimed were incidents of antisemitism. Speaker Mike Johnson, overlooking the encampment, called for the National Guard to dismantle it as students chanted, “Mike, you suck.”

The tension reached a crescendo when dozens of demonstrators forcibly entered Hamilton Hall, a campus building famous for being occupied by anti-war demonstrators five decades earlier. The next night, in a stunning show of force, Columbia’s then-president authorized hundreds of New York Police Department officers to swarm the campus and arrest over 100 people, mostly students.

The group’s demands, which included that the school cut all financial ties to Israel, ultimately went unmet. The “autonomous group” that occupied the campus building was independent from CUAD.

The campus remains a hotbed of anti-war protest activity. Last week, NYPD officers arrested nine students at Barnard, one of Columbia’s affiliate institutions, for refusing to leave a sit-in at a campus library. And on Monday, a few hundred pro-Palestinian protesters gathered nearby outside ICE’s field office in Lower Manhattan to speak up against Khalil’s immigration arrest, holding signs that read “Release Mahmoud Khalil,” and “Hands off our Students.”

In a statement, Columbia said it was aware of reports of ICE agents on campus and “is committed to complying with all legal obligations and supporting our student body and campus community.” The school noted that “law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including University buildings.”

A Columbia spokesperson did not comment on Khalil’s detention specifically.

[theking]

Hearing for Brown University doctor deported to Lebanon canceled after attorneys withdraw
A federal judge abruptly canceled a court hearing Monday morning for a Brown University assistant professor and doctor who was deported over the weekend from Boston to Lebanon after the judge had ordered immigration officials to give him notice first.

In an order filed just as the hearing was set to get underway, US District Judge Leo Sorokin, an Obama appointee, said he had received testimony that “Officers at Logan did not receive notice of the Court’s Order from their legal counsel until after Dr. Alawieh ‘had already departed the United States’ and that ‘[a]t no time would CBP not take a court order seriously or fail to abide by a court’s order.’”

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, was detained Thursday at Boston Logan International Airport upon her return from a visit to Lebanon, according to a federal complaint filed Friday by her cousin, Yara Chehab. A Lebanese citizen who was living in Rhode Island, she had been approved for an H-1B visa last year to work in the Division of Nephrology at Brown University’s medical school – after studying at three US universities since 2018 – the federal complaint states.

Sorokin said he was delaying Monday’s hearing at the request of Chehab’s attorney after other lawyers representing her withdrew from the case “as a result of further diligence.” Plaintiff’s attorney Stephanie Marzouk declined Monday to comment to CNN.

Alawieh’s reported expulsion came as Republican President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to sharply restrict border crossing and ramp up immigration arrests. It came less than a week after the detention of Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil, whose attempted deportation was put on hold by a judge.

Over the weekend, hundreds of immigrants with alleged gang ties were deported by the Trump administration, despite a judge’s order blocking their removal. The White House said the judge’s order came after the migrants, most from Venezuela, had left the US.

Alawieh in February went to Lebanon for what she thought would be a short visit but was delayed in returning while trying to get paperwork from the US Consulate in Beirut, the court document says.

Her paperwork was approved March 11, but when Alawieh arrived at the Boston airport two days later, she was immediately detained and told she would be sent back to Lebanon the next day, according to the complaint. Chehab told the court she filed suit on behalf of her cousin because Customs and Border Protection would not give Alawieh access to attorneys.

Sorokin on Friday ordered Alawieh “shall not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without providing the Court 48 hours’ advance notice,” saying it was necessary “to give the Court time to consider the matter.”

Customs and Border Protection “has refused to provide any information on the reason for her detention and expedited removal, nor to confirm the flight,” the initial complaint stated.

“Migrants bear the burden of establishing admissibility and Customs and Border Protection officers “adhere to strict protocols to identify and stop threats,” agency spokesperson Hilton Beckham told Reuters. CNN has reached out to Customs and Border Protection for comment.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations believes Alawieh was “wrongly deported,” it said.

“Deporting lawful immigrants like Dr. Alawieh without any basis undermines the rule of law and reinforces suspicion that our immigration system is turning into an anti-Muslim, white supremacist institution that seeks to expel and turn away as many Muslims and people of color as possible,” CAIR said Sunday in a statement.

Democratic Rep. Gabe Amo of Rhode Island remains “committed to getting answers” from the Department of Homeland Security on Alawieh’s status, he said on X Sunday.

“We are seeking to learn more about what has happened, but we need to be careful about sharing information publicly about any individual’s personal circumstances,” Brown University spokesperson Brian Clark told CNN on Monday.

The university sent an email Sunday titled, “Travel guidance and resources for international community.”

“Out of an abundance of caution, we encourage international students, staff, faculty and scholars – including US visa holders and permanent residents (or ‘green card holders’) – to consider postponing or delaying personal travel outside the United States until more information is available from the US Department of State,” the guidance reads.

[Visualmon]

Yeah, Trump's policy is rather trash. He's after anyone without criminal record has a green card waiting for their citizenship. 

[theking]

Cornell student who challenged Trump EOs targeting pro-Palestinian protesters now faces deportation
A Cornell University graduate student filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump's executive orders aimed at going after universities and "foreign national" protesters, then he was asked to surrender to ICE.

Momodou Taal, a Ph.D. student in Africana Studies at Cornell University, filed the suit on Saturday hoping to prevent the administration from targeting him and others who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests. An attorney for Taal said he had been targeted by some of the same groups that had advocated for Mahmoud Khalil's arrest and that his client feared he could be next.

Taal is a citizen of the U.K. and Gambia and is in the United States on a student visa.

According to court records, Taal was temporarily suspended from Cornell in April and September of 2024 for his participation in student protests. Instead of imposing sanctions that could have affected his immigration status, the university chose to allow Taal to continue studying remotely until Spring 2025 when his full access to the campus would be restored, his lawyers said.

[theking]

Bet this student in Minnesota's Twin Cities is not White either...:

University of Minnesota graduate student was detained by ICE for prior drunken driving incident, DHS official says
A University of Minnesota graduate student who was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials last week was taken into custody because of a prior drunken driving incident and not for involvement in campus protests, according to a senior Department of Homeland Security official.

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“This is not related to student protests,” the official said in a statement on Monday. “The individual in question was arrested after a visa revocation by the State Dept. related to a prior criminal history for a DUI.”

In a letter to the campus community, the University of Minnesota said the individual was an “international student” who was detained last Thursday at an off-campus residence.

The student, who has not been identified, is enrolled at the Twin Cities campus. CNN reached out to the student’s attorney on Monday for an update following the DHS statement on the reasoning for the arrest but did not immediately hear back.

However, the attorney said in an earlier statement to CNN that the case was “highly sensitive situation” and they wanted to protect their client’s privacy.

Detaining an international student over a prior DUI conviction seems to suggest a different approach by immigration officials who, so far, appear focused on students who have participated in protests against the Israel-Hamas war.

[theking]

Trump Admin Deports Teen With No Criminal Record to El Salvador Prison: Report
Wilmer Gutiérrez last saw his son the morning of Feb. 24. Later that day, his nephew called to tell him that 19-year-old Merwil Gutiérrez had been arrested just steps from their shared apartment in the Bronx. "The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building," he recalled. "One said, ‘No, he's not the one,' like they were looking for someone else. But the other said, ‘Take him anyway.'"

Merwil was among the 238 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, according to Documented, a newsroom reporting on immigrant communities in New York City. He has no criminal record, neither in Venezuela nor the U.S, per the outlet, and does not have any tattoos, which is one of the criteria ICE officers use to claim migrants are members of the Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang.

William Parra, an attorney at Inmigración Al Día, the law firm representing his case, says Merwil's detention was unjustified as he has an immigration court case pending with his father and was taking the proper steps to formalize their situation. "Merwil was detained for hanging out with friends and was at the wrong place at the wrong time. ICE was not looking for him, nor is there any evidence whatsoever that Merwil was in any gang," said Parra.

The father and son arrived in the U.S. in 2023, along with Merwil's grandfather and cousin. The family had fled Nicolás Maduro's dictatorship and come to America in hopes of economic stability. Before he was arrested, Merwil had received his immigration papers and had a court date scheduled for February 2027.

Wilmer has struggled to understand why his teenage son was sent to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison tied to allegations of torture, extrajudicial killings, and other human rights abuses. "I feel like my son was kidnapped," said Wilmer. "I've spent countless hours searching for him, going from one precinct to another, speaking with numerous people who kept referring me elsewhere. Yet, after all this, no one has given me any information or provided a single document about his case."

"I could have understood if he'd been sent back to Venezuela," he said before asking: "But why to a foreign country he's never even been to?"

CBS' 60 Minutes released a report that found 75 percent of the Venezuelans - 179 men - deported by the Trump administration in March had no apparent criminal record. The migrants - who the administration claimed had ties to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua - were sent to El Salvador without any due process.

The Department of Homeland Security later admitted it had wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an innocent man with protected status, to CECOT due to an "administrative error." Despite being ordered by the Supreme Court to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S., the Trump administration has openly disregarded the ruling.

On Tuesday, Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura - who is an American citizen - pleaded with the Trump administration and El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, to "stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar."

"Today is 34 days after his disappearance, and I stand before you filled with a spirit that refuses to bring down," she said before a crowd of reporters and protestors. "Enough is enough," she concluded. "My family can't be robbed of another day without seeing Kilmar. This administration has already taken so much from my children, from Kilmar's mother, brother, sisters, and me."

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