President Donald Trump‘s hardline approach to immigration has fueled questions about whether green card holders could face deportation over constitutionally protected speech.
Newsweek reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment via email.
Why It Matters
Cases such as those involving Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder who was arrested over involvement in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, have drawn scrutiny toward the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Legal experts have sounded the alarms that green card holders are being targeted for deportation over reasons connected to their speech.
This could have implications for more than 10 million green card holders living in the United States.
What to Know
Khalil’s case is perhaps the most prominent that has led to questions about green card holders’ free speech rights, protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. He was detained in March after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleged he was a national security threat, which he has denied.
Other cases that have raised these concerns include that of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student who was arrested after she penned an opinion piece criticizing the university’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, or Yunseo Chung, another Columbia student arrested after participating in pro-Palestinian protests.
The administration has argued that these detainments and deportations are necessary to protect the national security interests of the U.S. But critics say those two individuals have not demonstrated any threats to national security and that their arrests are tied to constitutionally protected speech that the Trump administration does not agree with.
Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), is among those filing legal challenges against the administration for allegedly moving to deport people for their protected speech.
“This isn’t theoretical right now to green card holders,” he said. “This is an active threat to their freedom of speech.”
Fitzpatrick said the idea that individual graduate students are “somehow imperiling” national security or foreign policy is “absurd.”
“They’re just airing opinions,” he said. “That means that they’re airing views that Americans can air without fear. And so at the point that you’re punishing someone for voicing an opinion that more than 300 million other people in the United States would be able to air and there wouldn’t be a problem, it really shows that this is about the ideas that they voice rather than any sort of serious security concern.”
In a court filing, FIRE accused Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio of “trying to turn the inalienable human right of free speech into a privilege contingent upon the whims of a federal bureaucrat, triggering deportation proceedings against noncitizens residing lawfully in this country for their protected political speech regarding American and Israeli foreign policy.”
Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia University, in an interview with Newsweek cast doubt on that justification, noting that green-card holders like Khalil or Chung do not have criminal records.
The First Amendment “protects all people on U.S. soil, regardless of their citizenship status,” and that has been affirmed in Supreme Court cases “over decades,” she said.
Many of the immigrants and green card holders targeted so far have been involved in pro-Palestinian protests, but there are concerns the administration could use the foreign policy justification to target others as well, Mukherjee said, describing it as a “slippery slope.”
“While today, the secretary of state may be invoking the foreign policy deportability ground against those who are speaking out in favor of Palestinian rights, tomorrow, next week, next month, the secretary of state could invoke that same ground, the foreign-policy-deportability ground to target economists who don’t believe in tariffs on countries that have been levied by the administration or could use the foreign policy deportability ground to target climate scientists who are outspoken about the Trump administration’s destruction of climate policies,” she said.
The foreign policy deportation ground has historically been used in cases involving individuals convicted of serious crimes elsewhere in the world such as terrorism—not cases involving people attending protests or writing articles about U.S. foreign policy.
“Those cases are worlds apart from what we are seeing today,” she said.
Many green card holders living in the United States are asking questions about how they should navigate the difficult situation. Mukherjee is providing counsel to some of these individuals who have asked questions about whether they should refrain from participating in protests or sharing their views on social media.
“Unfortunately, I am urging people to proceed with caution given this administration’s disregard for the protections that should be offered to all people on U.S. soil under the First Amendment,” she said.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services this week announced in August that immigration officers have been ordered to apply a more holistic assessment of “good moral character” when deciding on naturalization applications—this has fueled concerns about what this may mean for some green card holders.
Gautam Hans, director of Cornell Law School’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Clinic, told Newsweek the State Department generally has “extensive leeway” over questions of deportations.
“The First Amendment arguments are very persuasive, but the courts also often defer to State on issues of immigration,” he said.
He warned that the administration may be using deportations against pro-Palestinian activists as a “trial balloon for more draconian measures.”
Former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg told Newsweek the change “would appear to give immigration officers discretion to evaluate social media posts, or even subscriptions to certain podcasts, as grounds for deportation.”
USCIS spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser previously told Newsweek the new process “ensures America’s newest citizens not only embrace America’s culture, history, and language but who also demonstrate Good Moral Character.”
“This memo ensures that USCIS officers are accounting for an alien’s positive contributions to American society—including community involvement, achievements, and financial responsibility rather than the absence of their misconduct. USCIS will continue to restore integrity in the nation’s immigration system—especially when it comes to the prestigious privilege of citizenship,” he said.
Rubio, however, has said the case involving Khalil is not about free speech.
“This is not about free speech. This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card, by the way,” he told reporters in March.
He continued, “So when you apply for a student visa or any visa to enter the United States, we have a right to deny you for virtually any reason, but I think being a supporter of Hamas and coming into our universities and turning them upside down and being complicit in what are clearly crimes of vandalization, complicit in shutting down learning institutions – there are kids at these schools that can’t go to class.”
What People Are Saying
Former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg told Newsweek: “While the First Amendment absolutely should provide protection for any green card holder, the administration has shown, repeatedly, that they do not care about, and will not respect, these constitutional protections,” he said. “While a judge may very well, ultimately, rule in favor of the green card holder, in the meantime he/she could be detained in a detention camp in a Florida swamp. At that point, many green card holders may choose to voluntarily self-deport.”
The Department of Homeland Security wrote in an X post this week: “If you hate America, you have no business demanding to live in America.”
What Happens Next
Trump’s immigration policies continue to face legal challenges. Hans said some of the cases involving deportations and the First Amendment are likely to eventually make it to the Supreme Court.
“Given the deference the Court gave to the Trump Administration in Trump v. Hawaii, I am not optimistic that the Court will do the right thing as a matter of law and protect immigrants and non-citizens,” he said.
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