In what may well be one of the most shameful episodes in American legal history since the abolition of chattel slavery, a Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the Trump regime can continue its blatantly unconstitutional deportation of a lawful permanent US resident and political prisoner, Mahmoud Khalil, pretty much because Marco Rubio says so:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/mahmoud-khalil-deportable

'Very Dark Stuff': Judge Rules Palestine Activist Mahmoud Khalil Can Be Deported

"A U.S. immigration judge in Louisiana on Friday ruled that Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and former Columbia University graduate student arrested last month after protesting Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, can be deported, a decision that came despite the Trump administration admitting the imminently expecting father committed no crime and was being targeted solely for constitutionally protected speech.

Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans said that she lacked the legal authority to question the determination by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Khalil was deportable. Earlier this week, Comans gave the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) until Friday to produce evidence that Khalil is eligible for deportation.

No such evidence was provided other than Rubio's assertion that he reserves the right to order Khalil's expulsion under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests."

As the article itself notes, this isn't a final victory for the Trump administration; Khalil can and will continue to fight this, and most legal experts seem pretty confident this is all going to end up in front of the Supreme Court before the government can actually deport him; although why the court's 6-3 fascist high composition gives anyone confidence that they'll stop the regime's fascist and blatantly unconstitutional ideological policing and repression, is somewhat beyond me. As horrifying as this decision is, a random immigration judge doesn't get to say "surprise, fascism is legal now" even if that's more or less what this ruling is pointing to.

With that having been noted however, I need folks to understand what the regime's successful (for now) argument is here, because if you don't get that, it's impossible to grasp just how far these nazis clearly mean to go with this. The government is admitting that Mahmoud Khalil had a legal right to be in the United States, and committed no crime whatsoever. They are expressly stating that he's being targeted for deportation because of his political beliefs, and opposition to the US-back genocide being conducted by Israel, against Palestinians in Gaza as we speak; which they have chosen to define as antisemitism for political and propaganda reasons. This is a fundamental denial of Khalil's First Amendment rights which regardless of what you heard on Fox News, apply to everyone in the United States, not just people born there.

Despite this however, the regime is arguing that they have the right to deport Khalil because the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 gives the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the right to unilaterally, even unconstitutionally, order Khalil's expulsion; citing that the Act empowers him "to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests." Who decides what US foreign policy interests are, has a right to to declare those decisions state secrets, and can change those potentially secret objectives at a whim? The Trump regime. Who decides which actions are "detrimental" to U.S. foreign policy decisions and who should be deported for them? Well the regime's argument is that it's Marco Rubio or whoever happens to be Trump's Secretary of State, and that he can do it by a whim, without explaining or justifying his decisions whatsoever.

So you caught that right? The regime can violate the constitutional rights of even a lawful US resident, because Marco Rubio feels a way, and he's not required to provide any more proof than "I said so." And yesterday, a U.S. immigration judge agreed with that logic. All of which now begs the question, what, or who, will Little Marco decide is "detrimental to U.S. foreign policy decisions" tomorrow?

In an early March announcement that was underreported at the time (but just became a lot more relevant in early April) the Trump regime revealed its intention to collect and presumably monitor social media handles of folks applying to legally work and reside in the United States:

https://theintercept.com/2025/03/23/trump-immigrants-social-media-citizenship-green-card/

Trump Wants Immigrants on U.S. Soil to Hand Over Social Media Accounts to Apply for Citizenship

"Collecting social media information, according to the USCIS proposal first posted March 5, is necessary “for the enhanced identity verification, vetting and national security screening.”

The proposal specifically cites Trump’s January 20 executive order, which advocates have warned goes well beyond the Muslim travel ban from Trump’s first term, which targeted people living abroad.

The new executive order stated that “the United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”

USCIS said the social media handles it collects would be used to determine if people applying for a variety of immigration statuses pose a “security or public-safety threat.”"

Of course, observers immediately noted the connection between this proposed policy and Trump's ideological policing, kidnaping, and attempted deportation of foreign students who participated in anti-Genocide protests and/or oppose the Trump regime:

"In light of Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil’s ongoing detention, one official from a Muslim civil rights group said the new policy poses special danger for critics of Israel and the Trump administration.

“This policy would disparately impact Muslim and Arab applicants seeking U.S. citizenship that have voiced support for Palestinian human rights,” said Robert McCaw, director of government affairs at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Collecting the social media identifiers of any potential green card applicants or citizens is the means to silencing their lawful speech.”

Furthermore, as a representative of the EFF presciently observed, there are few if any limits on the scope of what the government can do with this data if they get it, and modern AI technology allows for the regime to ideologically police and target a terrifying number of people who oppose our fascist overlords. It's also, strictly speaking, a violation of Constitutional rights:

"The policy proposal does not sketch out limits on how USCIS can use its newly acquired data, according to Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Hussain said she was particularly concerned that the government might use artificial intelligence or other automated tools to punish speech it dislikes, pointing to a news report that the State Department is using AI to revoke the visas of people who allegedly express “pro-Hamas” sentiments.

Hussain said she feared a chilling effect, where people applying for a change in status refrain from speaking about potentially controversial issues.

“Anybody who is within the bounds of the United States has First Amendment rights,” she said. “The Constitution applies whether you are somebody who is a citizen or somebody who is a green card holder who is here in the United States. I think that this administration is trying to chip away at that notion, but that is very much what First Amendment jurisprudence has been under the courts.”

Finally, it should be pointed out that the regime's proposal gives no indication whatsoever of when the government would stop recording and monitoring the social media activities of the people it's targeting:

"CAIR’s McCaw said he worried that the policy could be used to continue tracking people’s activity on social media even after they become naturalized citizens.

“There’s no clear sign on when this intrusion into our electronics and communications will end,” he said."