Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are doing acrobatics to justify the Trump administration’s detainment of a Palestinian activist and green card holder, an escalation in its apparent willingness to go after people it sees as political enemies.
The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has not been charged with a crime, is the first of its kind in President Donald Trump’s second administration. Trump has said there are “many to come.” And as Democrats express worries about the precedent of arresting and revoking green cards from activists, Republicans are praising the administration’s actions, even as they’ve spent years making free speech a rallying cause for their party.
“I’m sure Secretary Rubio is very careful about this. I’m willing to bet he committed some legal violation,” Sen. Josh Hawley said, adding that he thought some of the protests and occupations at universities were unlawful. “When you assault students, when you break into campus buildings, when you tear down statues, that’s not free speech protest — that’s vandalism, that’s assault. People who do that, I think, ought to be deported.”