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This is It Could Happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout. This episode is going to be about ice actions against students, scholars, and professors around the country and this wave of deportations targeting people engaged in pro-Palestine speech, protest, as well as some individuals who have been roped up in this new wave of deportations who have not publicly engaged in Palestine activism.
Let's start on the evening of Saturday, March 8th.
Mahmoud Khalil and his wife were returning home from dinner when plainclothes ICE agents followed the couple into their campus apartment building at Columbia University. A man wearing a Marvel graphic tee arrested Khalil for then unknown reasons and threatened to arrest Khalil's wife, who is eight months pregnant and an American citizen. When Khalil's wife brought his green card from their apartment, she says one of the ICE agents placed a phone call, informing someone Khalil was a permanent resident.
to which the person on the phone replied, let's bring him in anyway. You're going to be under arrest. So turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around. Okay, he's not resisting. He's giving me his phone, okay? I understand, he's not resisting. Don't worry, Mike, he'll be happy. You're going to have to come with us. I'm coming with you, don't worry. No one's resisting, no one's having more trouble. Just go ahead.
You guys really don't need to be doing all of that.
During the arrest, Khalil's lawyer, Amy Greer, spoke on the phone with one of the ICE agents who said that they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil's student visa. Greer reiterated to the agents that Khalil was in fact a permanent resident with a green card. But the ICE agent just responded by saying they were revoking the green card instead.
Khalil's a graduate student who has been studying at Columbia for over two years. Last year, Khalil emerged as a visible figure in the college encampment protests, becoming a public spokesperson and a lead negotiator on behalf of Columbia University apartheid Divest. Though never being arrested, Khalil faced harassment from right-wing Zionist doxing campaigns calling for his deportation.
And when ICE did come for Khalil, disappearing him to a detention facility in Louisiana and cutting him off from communication with his wife and lawyer, throughout all of this, he was not charged with any crime. Instead, ICE and the State Department are using a rarely used Cold War era immigration statute that gives the Secretary of State the power to exclude or deport any non-citizen of the United States if there are, quote, reasonable grounds to believe that
Yeah, that was the one that like, I remember at the time you and I were discussing this like in our group chat and we were trying to work out like how the Secretary of State could be revoking a green card. Yeah. And I think that's
I think you found this or you found it somewhere in there. The Trump administration has been very, very good at finding very obscure pieces of law that it can wield against migrants, right? Like no one in 2016 would have foreseen what they did with Title 42, which is a public health law. And they're doing something similar here. I mean, they may have spent the last four years looking for these things, especially when the campus protests began. But like this is entirely...
unprecedented as far as I'm aware. And right after this happened, we discussed how this case was probably going to be used as a testing ground for employing these tactics on a more widespread scale, creating legal precedent. And sure enough, Khalil's case was not an outlier. This was just the first public instance of the Trump administration's directed targeting of students they believe to be associated with protests against Israel and its actions in Gaza.
And this wave of actions by ICE had actually already begun before Khalil's arrest. The day before Khalil was arrested, ICE agents knocked on the door of PhD student Rajani Srinivasan, who a few days prior was suddenly notified that her student visa had been revoked. When ICE agents knocked, she did not answer the door. The next day, ICE showed up again to her Columbia University apartment.
Trina Vossen was not home, but upon hearing of Khalil's arrest just a few hours later, she decided to quickly collect some belongings and flee to Canada. Five days later, when ICE returned to her residence, but this time with a warrant, Trina Vossen was already gone. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praised this as quote-unquote self-deportation. Yeah, they talk about this a lot. Like, self-deportation is definitely one of their goals. They talked about it before Trump even came into power. Like,
That's what we're seeing a lot of these spectacle raids and like spectacle deportations. Scare tactics. Yeah, exactly. The desire is that people leave. Is she a Canadian citizen or like... I don't believe so, no. Okay. It was just the fastest flight from LaGuardia. Out of the country. Out of like, you know, the closest she could be. Yeah.
I wonder what her immigration status is in Canada now. She is currently figuring this whole situation out still. Okay. Navigating her legal options both in Canada and the States. Yeah, that would be interesting too to see what Canada can offer her. And like, I don't think the Trump administration would go after like having her extradited back because as you say, she's not accused of a crime and they've kind of got what they wanted. Yeah.
It'll be interesting to follow that. There is no need for extradition because none of the people that we're talking about today were accused of any crime. Yeah. With the other cases of quote-unquote self-deportation, one of the issues is people have had their passports seized and held, like lots of Venezuelan migrants, so they actually can't or it would be very difficult for them to just get on a flight and leave. Yeah.
which I think is in part why she made the decision to get out when she could. DHS claimed in a statement that Srinivasan advocated violence and was, quote, involved in activities supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization, unquote.
Isis targeting her seemingly stems from being mass arrested while trying to return to her apartment from a picnic with friends on the same day as the Hamilton Hill occupation. She couldn't get home and was caught up in the crowd and was arrested among a hundred other people.
She received two summons for obstructing traffic and failure to disperse, but her case was quickly dismissed. Homeland Security claims that failing to declare these two summons is what caused her visa to be revoked. Okay. Interesting.
That same week, ICE went after another green card holder at Columbia, a 21-year-old student named Yoon Sao Chung, a permanent resident who immigrated to the United States from South Korea with her family when she was seven. On March 9th, ICE agents visited her parents' home looking for Chung. And that day, she received an odd text message reading, Hi, Yoon Sao. This is Audrey from the police. My job is to reach out to you and see if you have any questions about your recent arrest and the process going forward.
when are you available for a phone call? Unquote. This recent arrest was allegedly in reference to being detained, among others, at a sit-in protest at Bernard College on March 5th. Chung was charged and then released with misdemeanor obstruction.
After receiving that sketchy text message, Chung got an email from Columbia Public Safety reading, quote, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has asked us to inform you that Homeland Security investigation agents are seeking to make contact with you in connection with an administrative warrant for your arrest. Consistent with the university's practice, we wanted to share this information and their request with you. If you are represented by counsel, it may make sense for your lawyer to speak directly with DHS, unquote.
Chung's lawyer decided to call, quote unquote, Audrey from the police, who revealed that she was actually an HSI agent and that the State Department was revoking Ms. Chung's residency status.
Now, rather than opting for self-deportation or turning herself into immigration authorities, Chung decided to go into hiding and fight the deportation in the courts while trying to evade ICE detention. When ICE failed to locate her, they enlisted the help of federal prosecutors. To quote from the New York Times, quote, on March 10th, Perry Carbone, a high-ranking lawyer in the federal prosecutor's office, told Ms. Ahmad, Ms. Chung's attorney, that the Secretary of State, Mr. Rubio, had revoked Ms. Chung's visa.
Ms. Ahmad responded that Ms. Chung was not in the country on a visa and was a permanent resident. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Kobani responded that Mr. Rubio had, quote, revoked that as well, unquote. Yeah. So this is the exact same language we saw with Khalil.
And it displays a general uncaring towards who they are actually targeting and what their actual legal status is in the United States. They think they're going after people with student visas, but when it turns out they have green cards, that doesn't stop them. They still continue to do it anyway.
On March 13th, ICE searched two residences on campus with warrants, citing a statute for harboring non-citizens, but Chung was nowhere to be found. Like Khalil, the Trump administration is arguing that her presence in the United States hinders the administration's foreign policy agenda.
But her lawyers note that Chung was not by any means a quote-unquote movement leader. She was simply one of hundreds of students who joined in nationwide protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. Her lawyers write, quote, Ms. Chung has not made public statements to the press or otherwise assumed a high-profile role in these protests. She was rather one of a large group of college students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns, unquote.
Chung had previously faced a university disciplinary process, which found she was not in violation of any university policy related to protests last year. Chung's lawyers filed a lawsuit to prevent her deportation, claiming that ICE's actions against Chung are illegal and unconstitutional. This lawsuit reads, quote, Officials at the highest echelons of government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike, including Ms. Chung's speech.
ICE's shocking actions against Ms. Chung form a part of a larger pattern of attempted U.S. government repression of constitutionally protected protest activity and other forms of speech, unquote.
On March 25th, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order halting efforts from ICE to detain or relocate Chung. The judge said that the government produced, quote, nothing in the record to indicate Chung is a danger to the community or a, quote unquote, foreign policy risk, or that she was in any communication with terrorist organizations. The judge said that there would be, quote, no trips to Louisiana here, unquote.
This is in reference to the big ICE detention facility in Louisiana. We'll be right back after this ad break.
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Okay, we're back.
Now, although Chung has at least temporarily halted ICE's efforts to detain or deport her, not all legal recourses have proven successful. This week, a U.S. district judge declined a request to block the deportation of Cornell student Mamadou Tal after the State Department revoked his visa.
On March 31st, Tall released a statement, quote, Yeah, it's pretty bleak.
So Tal has elected for the quote unquote self-deportation option, at least for now. I believe his case is going to continue, but he's not going to remain in the United States. Yeah. I think he returned to the UK, right? I believe so. Yeah. He's a British citizen.
Now, interestingly, last September, Cornell University itself tried to revoke Tull's student visa for involvement in student protests. But he successfully appealed and was able to continue his African Studies PhD remotely. Yeah, I spoke to him a little bit back then, just via direct message. But I think at that time, whatever his agreement was, it seems like there was a component of it that at least he didn't want to talk about it in public, which is fine. Everyone has a right to do that, and he should do what's best for himself. But, uh,
Maybe I'll try and follow up with him again now, see if he wants to speak. Because he seems to have, like...
He's been, of all of these people, the one who's been able to make the most statements and control his narrative to some degree. Yeah, no, he entered this period of radio silence after he won his appeal last fall and then only started speaking publicly again once he began getting targeted by the Trump administration the past month and a half. I think he proactively filed that suit, right? Yes. Yeah.
Now, the scale that Mark Rubio and ICE are seeking for in regards to deportations is seemingly going to be increasingly large. On March 27th, Secretary of State Mark Rubio claimed that he has revoked over 300 student visas so far, saying at a press conference, quote, we do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas, unquote.
Now, there are a few ways the government is currently trying to find these quote-unquote lunatics. ICE seems to be targeting non-citizens who have been arrested or detained at Palestine protests, even if their charges were subsequently dropped. This is the case for Chung and Srini Vassen, as well as former student Lekha Kordia, a Palestinian who was arrested at Columbia campus protests in April of 2024. She is currently being held in an ICE detention facility in Texas.
Now, beyond arrest records, the government is utilizing the World Wide Web and social media to identify new and returning visa applicants and possibly current visa holders that, quote, support terrorist organizations, unquote.
Social media screening of immigrants and visa holders has been slowly ramping up since 2014 and accelerated during Trump's first term. But a new directive from Secretary of State Mark Rubio, titled Enhanced Screening and Social Media Vetting for Visa Applicants, was sent out on March 25th and leaked by journalist Ken Klippenstein. The directive cites two executive orders from Trump, measures to combat anti-Semitism, and, quote, preventivism.
protecting the United States from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats, unquote. The State Department is now requiring consular officers to conduct a, quote unquote, mandatory social media review with screenshotting for students and student exchange visitors with the intent of looking for evidence of, quote, advocating for, sympathizing with, or persuading others to endorse or espouse terrorist activities or support a designated foreign terrorist organization.
Unquote. Now, this applies to FM and J visas. So student exchange visas, academic visas, and vocational visas. The directive also instructs officers to search social media for, quote, conduct that bears a hostile attitude towards U.S. citizens or U.S. culture, including government, institutions, or founding principles. Unquote.
Which is kind of the most incredibly broad thing I've ever seen. Yeah, I mean, that's leaving it at the complete discretion of the officer, right? There's already been an instance of U.S. Customs agents denying entry to someone who had a quote-unquote anti-Trump sentiments found on their phone.
Now, though this new directive is focused on denying or revoking student visas, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to expand its social media data collection to U.S. citizenship, green card, and asylum applicants. Basically, anyone and everyone in the U.S. immigration system, no matter their current status or what previous vetting they might have already gone through.
On March 5th, DHS issued a 60-day notice for public comment on a proposal for, quote, uniform vetting standards and national security screening, unquote, that includes the collection of social media information for all non-citizens applying for immigration benefits like citizenship or permanent residency.
A statement from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service reads, quote, these efforts ensure that those seeking immigration benefits to live and work in the United States do not threaten public safety, undermine national security, or promote harmful anti-American ideologies, unquote. Yeah, like the anti-American ideologies, again, it's just vastly broad, right? It's like crazy Red Scare level stuff. Yeah. And I'm guessing this will be
either like a literal control F of whatever they can find of your public social media or some kind of AI system. That's what it seems to be, right? Former immigration agents have suggested that they're probably going to use some AI system for this as they've already kind of used more primitive versions. But ramping up to this scale and with like this increased focus and like attention on quote unquote AI is going to affect the way that they do this vetting process. Absolutely. Yeah, great.
So though the government is trying to increase their social media screening, so far, they actually haven't had to do that much of their own research to identify targets for removal. On March 17th, a Georgetown scholar named Bidar Khan Suri was arrested by Homeland Security outside his home in Virginia, where he lives with his wife, who's a U.S. citizen, and their three kids.
According to Suri's lawyer, masked agents, quote, refused to tell him the basis for the arrest, handcuffed him, and forced him into an unmarked black SUV, unquote. Later, his wife was informed that her husband's visa was revoked based on the social media posts and that Suri was sent to ICE detention in Louisiana.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin posted on X that Suri was, quote, actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism on social media. The Secretary of State issued a determination that Suri's activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable, unquote. Of course, any single post in support of Palestine is going to be seen as, quote, unquote, promoting anti-Semitism, according to Mark Rubio.
Suri's lawyer wrote in a court filing, quote, Dr. Suri is an academic, not an activist, but he spoke out on social media about his views on the Israel-Gaza war. Even more so, his wife is an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and the violence it has perpetuated against Palestinians, unquote. Yeah, it seems like he was identified through his wife, right? Correct. And we'll get to that. Suri has no criminal record, and according to a colleague, he did not attend campus protests.
However, Suri's lawyer writes that his family have been victims of a doxing campaign, with his wife stating that a website had, quote, claimed falsely that my husband and I have, quote, ties to Hamas, unquote. The Homeland Security Assistant Secretary referenced that claim in a public statement on Twitter. And this harassment stems in part from Suri's father-in-law being Ahmad Youssef, a former advisor to Hamas.
A federal judge blocked Suri's deportation as immigration court proceedings continue, but he still remains in ICE detention. What kind of visa was he on? He's not a green card holder. He received his visa to continue doctoral research on peace building in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's some kind of academic or exchange visa. I don't think we know the exact type that he has. Okay. Yeah. It would be interesting to know if, like, are they searching...
just through f1 visa databases or are they so i mean obviously not if they're finding these green card people but like well i i think specifically in this case they're searching social media they're not searching through their own databases they don't care what kind of visa he has they're looking at this doxing campaign that's been targeted at him and his family for like over a year and using that as the basis to to deport him right and then being like can we deport
He's not a citizen, so yes, basically. Even though his wife is a citizen. Yeah, his children, presumably, therefore also citizens. His wife, whose father is Ahmad Yusuf, they can't deport her because she's a citizen, or at least they can't deport her right now. Who knows if they'll try to denaturalize in the future. Yeah. But this is the easiest person to target. Yeah. And I think that's kind of what they're going for. Like, a lot of this is...
It's like the politics of owning the libs, right? It's like the politics of being angry at your niece and nephew on Facebook and wanting to humiliate them. It's not a particularly coherent policy other than the Palestine protests made a lot of people on the right mad and they don't like migrants and now they're using...
this obscure legal provision as a cudgel against everything they dislike. Yeah. And using social media to identify people who have never been arrested, never been charged with anything. Yeah. We're going to finish our discussion on these doxing campaigns and ICE action targeting students after this ad break.
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So right now, the two main vectors for ICE detention, whether you have a green card or a visa, seems to be previous arrests or these mass doxing campaigns. Now, someone like Mahmoud Khalil was never arrested or charged with a crime, but instead has been the target of harassment from both a local campus doxing account run by Columbia professors and fellow students, as well as larger right-wing Zionist organizations like Canary Mission.
A few days before being arrested by ICE, Canary Mission posted a video naming Khalil as a quote-unquote siren emoji, suspected foreign national alert. So what is Canary Mission, if you're lucky enough to be unaware? Since 2015, Canary Mission has been collecting and publishing personal information of people they accuse of promoting, quote, hatred of the United States, Israel, and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond, unquote.
Now, they have profiles for a few legitimate American neo-Nazis, but many profiles only cite criticism of the Israeli government and its actions in Gaza as proof of alleged anti-Semitism. And now there is increasing evidence that the government is using websites like Canary Mission to target students, professors, and scholars for ICE deportation, a
Essentially outsourcing intel gathering from these pro-Israel non-government organizations. A few weeks ago, Canary Mission uploaded a profile for Rumeza Oz Turk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University. They included a picture, her resume, and linked to an op-ed she co-wrote last year for her student paper criticizing the university for its ties to Israel amidst the war in Gaza.
For this, the Canary mission claimed Ozturk, quote, engaged in anti-Israel activism, unquote. Two weeks later, while walking alone to Iftar dinner for Ramadan, a plainclothes ICE agent approached Ozturk on the sidewalk. As he grabbed her arms and wrestled away her phone, five more agents surrounded her and pulled up their gator masks as neighbors began filming the arrest.
Within 24 hours, she was moved to ICE detention in Louisiana. A statement from Homeland Security claimed that HSI, Homeland Security Investigation, had determined that Ozturk, quote, engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans, unquote.
And Secretary of State Mark Rubio said, quote, we gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses, unquote. Yeah, I mean, again, like,
Writing an op-ed is like as central to the First Amendment as things can be, right? Yeah, there's no evidence she was even attending campus protests, let alone tearing up the university. She co-wrote an op-ed and you should not be deported for engaging in protest on a university campus at all, right? This is blatantly unconstitutional, extremely worrying.
The fact that this person just got a profile in the Canary Mission website for writing an op-ed and then this is used as justification for her deportation is still an even greater escalation. Yeah, if we're talking about this sort of liberal idea of the marketplace of ideas, the way that ideas enter the marketplace, you will find nothing more amenable to liberalism than writing an op-ed in your campus newspaper. That is the
the most like well-behaved straight down the middle constitutionally protected thing way to engage in anti-genocide activism pro-palestine activism so like in a sense this one is particularly disturbing like it's a frontal assault on first amendment rights for non-citizens is what it is yes
On March 24th, Canary Mission published a new section of their website titled Uncovering Foreign Nationals, which lists the profiles of non-citizens who they believe qualify for deportation. Jesus. Another far-right pro-Israel doxing group called Batar, which even the ADL lists as an extremist group—
Which is wild. Batar says that they have given the Trump administration a deportation list of thousands of names, including citizens that they expect to be denaturalized.
People like Mamadou Tal and Mahmoud Khalil have been targeted by both of these organizations. People will be familiar with, I don't know if it's Bitar or Bitar, but like you probably have seen videos of them on campus trying to hand pagers to people. Pagers. Yeah, like... Making light of the pager attack Israel did. I mean...
Making a threat. Sure. If you're going to come onto a campus and make a fucking bomb threat and accuse someone else of terrorism, I mean, the hypocrisy is kind of the point. Or even just like, quote unquote, celebrating the deaths of people, right? Yeah, right. Like mocking this attack which killed children, which crippled people. It's just disgusting. It's just abhorrent.
They seem to get a lot of attention online because they do the thing where they go up to people and say deliberately provocative things and then film their reactions, right? They're kind of IRL trolling. The past week, ICE actions against students have seemingly accelerated.
Alireza Daroudi, a doctoral student from Iran studying at the University of Alabama, was arrested by ICE on March 25th in the middle of the night at his off-campus apartment. Daroudi's entry visa expired, but he was allowed to stay in the States as he still maintained his student status. It's unknown why exactly he was targeted. He has no ties to protests or any notable online footprint. It could be his...
Ethnic origin, right? Like... Yeah, it could be his name, right?
Yeah, but we should explain the status thing a bit more for people who aren't familiar. So like your status is when you're in good standing with the university. So normally that means you need to be enrolled in 12 credits per, you might be on semesters, you might be on quarters. I don't think it's usually matters. But you have to, there's a minimum course load. It may be different for different systems. I don't know. You'd also need to be in good standing in terms of like not late on your fees, right? Your tuition fees, that kind of stuff, right? Not in any...
You haven't been expelled or excluded from the university for any actions that you've taken, that kind of thing. It means you are currently a student at the university, basically. The only time this normally affects international students I'm aware of, like as a person who now teaches students, is like they can't drop below a certain course load when otherwise they may wish to drop below a certain course load to either focus on, they might have like a research degree
They might be doing other stuff on campus like TAing, right? Sometimes that TAing counts towards their course load. Sometimes it doesn't, but it can affect things like that. But generally, it would be the university that would update that status, right? That would notify U.S. Customs and Immigration if somebody fell out of compliance with that.
If I'm hearing right, that doesn't seem like that's what happened here, right? No. Simply, his entry visa expired. So if he left the country, he then would have to get another visa to get back in. But he can stay as long as he still has his valid student status. So not only is ICE trying to revoke these, like,
visas, but they're trying to essentially say that by revoking these visas, they are also attempting to strip them of their student status, which is like a separate step. These things can get kind of very blurry, though. Yeah, I don't quite know how that works in terms of are ICE supposed to be able to? I don't think it hugely matters at this point. Technically, the State Department does have that ability, but it's under the same foreign policy risk designation. Okay.
And they'll justify it by saying, well, his visa already expired. So we're just removing him because his visa expired. Right. Even though that's not really how this works. Yeah. And they don't have to remove him for that reason. But yeah, in this case, I guess they're going for something else. No, because the University of Alabama did not elect to rescind his student status. He was a student in good standing. Yeah. And thus legally allowed in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. Like everyone else here, he hadn't done anything that...
would under normal circumstances lead to him having any interactions with USCIS.
Just this last week, ICE detained a University of Minnesota grad student at their off-campus housing. The university released a statement saying that they had no prior knowledge of this incident and had not shared any information with federal authorities. This person's name is still not released. Last week, a student at the Southern Illinois University had their visa revoked. The school administration told their college paper that the university has no role in the visa revocation process.
The Illinois governor's office is working with schools across the state to, quote, ensure they are being vigilant about what's happening on their respective campuses. The governor's team has asked universities to communicate with international students about the general resources available to them through the institution. In addition, we have suggested that they connect impacted students with legal resources that have been in place for several years, unquote, according to a statement sent to the university paper, The Daily Egyptian.
Tina Sickinger, which is...
a very cool name, the school's director of international student and scholar services sent an email to the international student body of Southern Illinois University advising them to carry photocopies of immigration documents with them at all times, as well as proof of enrollment and records of U.S. residences. The email recommended that students, quote, use caution on social media and exercise discretion when participating in political demonstrations or protests. Unquestionably,
Unquote. Warning that though protests should be protected speech, quote, such activities can sometimes be misinterpreted and may carry risks to your immigration status. Unquote.
Unfortunately, I think this is the university trying to look out for these students. Yeah, that's the best you can expect from them, really. And they are providing legal resources to these students, but they're essentially saying you shouldn't post anything or do any protests because then ICE might come kidnap you. Yeah. Which is just a fucked up situation to be in. Yeah. They don't have any other ability to stop this right now.
I am curious what Pritzker is going to continue to do here, though. Yeah, I mean, none of what they've said is wrong. It's kind of what you can expect from the university, the best you can expect from the university, really. It's like, hey, we've noticed it's happening.
So that is the situation as it currently stands. I do have one final tidbit here just that highlights the absurdity of this whole situation. On March 24th, a lawsuit on behalf of Israeli Columbia students and relatives of Israeli October 7th victims was filed against Columbia Jewish Boys for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and individual Columbia students, including Mahmoud Khalil.
The lawsuit alleges that these Columbia groups and students are the domestic propaganda arm of Hamas and even claims that these groups had advanced notice that the October 7th attack was going to take place. Oh, come on. So the plan was kept secret among Hamas's own political allies in the region. But they gave an Ivy League university in New York City a heads up. A tip off.
They just let them know what was coming. Completely absurd. Yeah, absolutely. Like the IDF completely failed to see this coming, right? But not the folks at the Ivy League universities who were ready and waiting. Hamas didn't tell the Houthis. They didn't tell Iran. They didn't tell Hezbollah. Didn't tell Hezbollah. But they told student activist groups in New York City at the Columbia University campus.
Yeah, absolutely ludicrous. Like, I eagerly await this court case, I guess, to see what evidence they have of this. The evidence is going to be like someone had a Palestinian flag. Some of the quote-unquote evidence that they allege is that some of these activist accounts had renewed activity in October of 2023, like before the attack happened. But this is just a simple coincidence. Obviously, these people did not have a heads-up
that the October 7th attack was going to take place. The lawsuit also argues that protest activity is not First Amendment protected speech, but in fact, quote, substantial assistance in the form of propaganda and recruiting services and in coordination with a designated foreign terrorist organization. Again, alleging there is some kind of communication between Hamas and student activists in New York City. Yeah, this is ludicrous. Like,
One of the reasons that maybe we're seeing this so much over the Palestine advocacy is that Hamas is a listed foreign terrorist organization. Many other groups and lots of groups in that part of the world are, but like it's just a bigger stick to wave, I guess, material aid or that no one has been actually accused of material aid to a foreign terrorist organization as far as I'm aware.
But like that is kind of the sort of stick that they're waving, right? That is the thing that they're alleging. I will end us with just this kind of final note. Now, while there are little signs that this would happen at a scale this large and this focused under a Democratic president,
A degree of consent for this type of targeting was manufactured the past year as it relates to Palestine protests, with some liberals and democratic politicians associating activists as pro-Hamas terrorists.
And this is the consequence of that public perception building and the consent being manufactured for that framing. And now that the even more evil side is in charge, they can take that justification and run with it way further than what a Joe Biden or a Kamala Harris would have done. So it is far worse, but it's not in a political bubble. This has been like a growing project for the past few years.
There was no point at which the Biden administration really effusively said, this is protected First Amendment speech. We may not like it, but it is central to the Bill of Rights. It's central to what America is supposed to be about.
They never defended the constitutionality of this speech. Yeah. Nor would they have intervened to stop the deportation of someone like Tall if Cornell decided to revoke his status, right? Right, yeah. I don't think the Biden administration or a Kamala Harris administration would be directing these universities to take that action themselves, nor would they be, I think, revoking student visas at scale like this. No. But they would have let ICE do the stuff that ICE does.
if universities themselves elect to remove student visas or unenroll these students. And a degree of the complacency here is placed on the actual university administrations, the university staff, who have been vilifying these protesters for the past two years. Yeah, and I mean, in some cases, right, like I'm thinking of one of Columbia, professors got away with things which are absolutely unacceptable, like 100%.
in some violation of your agreement with the university as a member of the faculty, like doxing your students, photographing students without their consent, following students around, like absolutely unacceptable. Like in any other context that you would be immediately shitcanned for that. Like really, really the only reason you can lose tenure seemingly is being a fucking creep to students or stealing a lot of money. And like universities did allow that for students
more than a year under the Biden administration. And like, we're seeing the consequences of that now. It's also worth noting that since I've had to quote from so many government statements this episode, the Trump admin is continuing to correlate any expression of sympathy or solidarity with Palestine
as explicit support for Hamas. Basically, anything you say that's critical of the Israeli government, its actions in Gaza, are being interpreted by the Trump administration as anti-Semitism and support for the October 7th massacre. This is a false equivalency. What the government alleges should not be automatically taken as the truth. These tactics have been used for years to broadly smear pro-Palestine activists while also hurting anti-Zionist Jews.
And I guess like finally, we are not necessarily endorsing every single thing that every single one of these students has said. Yeah. We do not necessarily agree with the framing of every single sentence that they have said. Yeah. I mean, we don't know everything that they've said. Yeah, exactly. This is like completely separate to that.
Yeah, it doesn't matter. We are defending their right to engage in constitutionally protected speech. Correct. No matter what they're saying, no matter if they have opinions on Hamas that differ from ours, no matter what they are saying at a campus protest,
It should not result in ICE targeting them and hunting them down and forcing students who attend sit-in protests into hiding to defend their own rights and to keep their green cards. This is like a completely absurd and like blatantly
fascist, to use the now overused word, frankly. But this is. This is what that is. If this was happening in China, if this was happening in Russia, in other countries, people would be very quick to call out... I mean, it does happen in Russia, right? Exactly. And people are quick to call it out. Yeah. The State Department of this country has called it out, right? Rightly. I don't agree with everything the State Department does, but I do agree with them on that. Like,
Yeah. And I think this is like, I know if you find yourself having a discussion about this, I think almost everyone in America can find something that they disagree with the government on or have disagreed with the government on. And like this hurts every single one of us, right? Like everyone's right to freedom of speech is challenged when someone's right to freedom of speech is challenged. And like, I think that is the way to approach this. It doesn't really matter how
If the people whose speech is being challenged right now, their speech is, if it's odious to us, if it's something that we don't agree with, like that isn't what's at stake. What's at stake is everyone's right to say everything without government consequences.
Well, I think that does it for us today at It Could Happen Here. We will continue to report on the targeting of students, scholars, and professors, and immigrants in general as the Trump administration ramps up its deportation efforts. If you would like to contact us about these topics, we have an encrypted email address at
CoolZoneTips at Proton.me. It is end-to-end encrypted, so if you use another encrypted email service or another ProtonMail account to send the email, only then is it encrypted. It Could Happen Here is a production of CoolZone Media. For more podcasts from CoolZone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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