"Thought crimes": Rubio lays out government's justification for deportations based on "beliefs"

The Trump medication is claiming the close to deport individuals based connected their beliefs oregon code alone, arsenic unit mounts to merchandise activist Mahmoud Khalil.

In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the authorities tin expel ineligible residents from the state based connected “past, current, oregon expected beliefs, statements, oregon associations that are different lawful.” The memo came successful effect to a national judge's bid to amusement grounds successful its lawsuit against Khalil.

Khalil was grabbed by national agents wrong his Columbia University lodging past period and transported to a detention halfway successful Louisiana.

Rubio pulled the alleged authorization to rendition activists from a 1952 enactment that specifies the Secretary of State tin emblem an idiosyncratic for deportation if their beingness could person “serious adverse overseas argumentation consequences.” The rarely-invoked clause is vague, though ineligible experts accidental the national authorities cannot unilaterally revoke a person's greenish paper status.

Rubio claimed successful the memo that Khalil’s engagement successful pro-Palestinian protests connected Columbia’s field constitutes a content worthy of deportation based connected the “U.S. argumentation to combat antisemitism astir the world.”

“Condoning antisemitic behaviour and disruptive protests successful the United States would severely undermine that important overseas argumentation objective,” helium wrote.

The assertion is successful enactment with Rubio’s erstwhile proposition that assemblage students who “create a ruckus” were deportable. Rubio made that lawsuit portion defending his determination to cancel Tufts University doctoral campaigner Rumeysa Ozturk's visa for an op-ed she wrote criticizing her university’s effect to field protests.

“Every clip I find 1 of these lunatics, I instrumentality distant their visa,” Rubio told reporters past month. "Go backmost and bash it successful your country."

Legal experts accidental the authorization claimed by Rubio, near unchallenged, would represent a large erosion of civilian liberties successful the United States.

“Welcome to the epoch of thought crimes,” salient nationalist information lawyer Bradley Moss wrote on Bluesky.

Khalil is 1 of astatine slightest 600 planetary students crossed 100 colleges successful the United States who Rubio has purportedly stripped of their visas, per an Inside Higher Education report. Thousands much could look a akin destiny aft DHS announced a program to surveil the societal media posts of non-citizens for pro-Palestinian oregon antisemitic ideology connected Wednesday.