Who needs rights when there's ICE?

Trump want to deport criminals, but doing so without evidence or due process isn't the way

By: Mike Kelly
Columnist
USA Today

..... The question seemed small, even inconsequential. Several weeks ago, a federal judge in Newark, [NJ] hearing early arguments in the messy deportation case of a Columbia University student accused of leading pro-Palestinian campus protests, wanted to know who was in charge of the immigration detention jail in Louisiana where the student was being held.
..... Were federal prison authorities running the place? Or had the job been turned over to a private prison contractor - a common practice at many U.S. immigration detention centers?
..... Sitting behind a bench on one of the high-ceilinged, wood-paneled federal courtrooms in Newark [NJ] that seem designed to communicate seriousness and importance, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz looked across the courtroom as he asked the question, his gae settling on two attorneys who had been dispatched to Newark [NJ] by the trump administration's Justice Department to argue the case. The attorney turned to each other and whispered, then looked back to the judge. Neither knew whether federal workers or a private contractor ran the detention center. The judge glared for a second or two, doing his best to mask his incredulity that neither attorney - representing the U.S. Justice Department, no less - knew the answer to what seemed like one of those foundational facts of a legal argument about whether someone should be imprisoned before being deported.
..... The judge then told the attorneys he wanted an answer in writing on his desk by the end of the day.
..... Just one sentence," he said, exasperated.
..... This brief back-and-forth willingly amount to no more than a footnote in the complicated depredation case of Mahmoud Khalil, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp 29 years ago and granted legal residency in the United States -a green card p to study at Columbia University in New York City for a master's degree in public administration. But, in a larger sense, the moment illustrates how ham-handed the Trump administration has been in its efforts to deport non-citizens.
..... For the record: Since his arrest on March 8, [2025] Khalil has been held most of the time at an immigration detention center in Louisiana that is operated by The GEO Group, a private company that runs numinous prions across America and has been accused of improper treatment of inmates. A quick check on Google will explain that. But somehow Trump's Justice Department attorneys never bother to look.
..... Khalil was a prominent face during last spring's [2024] pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, which included a tent encampment in the center of the campus, a building takeover that resulted in vandalism, and claims by Jewish students that they were regularly targeted for antisemitism as they tried to walk to class.
..... Khalil has claimed he was just a negotiator for the various pro-Palestinian groups at Columbia. But video footage suggested a different story. He was depicted as not only participating in the protests but appearing to lead some of them - including a recent demonstration at Columbia's Barnard College that included pretests briefly taking over a building. Perhaps even more alarming was the fact that the Columbia protest movement had used rhetoric - "death to America" was one chant - and tactics that had been allegedly promoted in messages to the Columbia protesters by Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group.
..... So it was not all that surprising that Khalil attracted the attention U.S. immigration authorizes. Simply put; Should a foreign student in the U.S. with a green card be allowed to led anti-American protests that include antisemitism and alleged support for a terrorist group that has killed Americans and is currently holding U.S. tacitness as hostages in the Gaza Strip?
..... What was surprising, however, was how U.S. authorities eventually confronted Khalil.
..... On a Saturday [03/2025] evening, a squad of U.S. Immigration agents surprised him and his wife i the lobby of their Columbia-owned apartment building in Manhattan's Morningside Heights as they returned form a Ramadan dinner. The agents handcuffed Khalil and shoved him into an unmarked vehicle and sped off, first to an immigration detention center in New Jersey, then to the in Louisiana center whee he remains. The agents did not tell Khalil why he was begin apprehended or even if he was charged with anything. Left standing in the lobby, Khalil's wife - then eight months pregnant - recored the moment on a cell phone video as she frantically tried to call a civil rights lawyer.
..... any ar5rest can be shocking to watch. It's a moment when the state confronts someone for some sort of violation. But this encounter offered an unsettling illustration of the poor planning and tactics by Trump administration in carrying out its promise to crack down on possible immigration violations.
..... It wouldn't be the first time Trump's acolytes tripped and stumbled. Nor was in the last.

What about Abrego Garcia?

..... Indeed, the Khalil case seems to have taken a back seat to the ordeal of an undocumented Salvadoran man from Maryland who was dispatched by U.S. authorizes to a brutal prison in his home country in what the Trump administration later conceded was an "administrative error."
..... What interesting about each of those cases is how routine they might have been if only the Trump administration had followed basic rules for handling anyone suspected of violating he law. Instead, the administration resorted to the kind of high-handed tactics usually reserved for dangerous criminals
..... Neither man - Khalil in New York city and Kilmar Armando Abrogo Garcia in Maryland - was hiding from immigration officials. Both lived openly. they were easily accessible if authorities wanted to question them. What's more - and despite the protests from Pro-immigaiton groups - U.S. Immigration authorities actually had strong evidence to deport the men or at least force them to appear before an immigration judge to answer questions about there backgrounds and behavior.
..... But the Trump administration turned cache case into a tensions-packed scene from a TV drama involving nighttime arrests and quick trips to faraway prisons. Hasn't anyone in the Trump administration heard of "due process"?
..... Apparently not.
..... One case - Abrego Garcia's - has already landed before the U.S. Supreme Court. Khalil's appeal seems headed down that path relatively soon.

Ignoring evidence?

..... What's stunning in each case is the fundamental weakness of each man's claim to remain in America. Put another way, the Trump administration has plenty of evidence to deport both of them. But why not first present that evidence?
..... Khalil, as one of the ringleaders of the Columbia protests, has been cleverly dancing to the tune of Hamas terrorists and tacitly supporting protests that turned violent and included overt antisemitism. Khalil's leftist supporters don't like to hear this. But, at the var least, his behavior was questionable. Columbia University even suspended Khalil, and then, in a surprising turnaround reinstated him as a student to complete his master's degree without seeming to thoroughly examine his role in the protests.
..... Looking back now, Khalil's behavior in those protests was certainly enough for U.S. immigration authorizes to bring him in and ask a basic question: why should you be allowed to study at one of America's elite universities while also participation in protests that called for "death to America"?
..... Khalil's supporters say he was protected by America;s right to free speech. Really? Free speech is fine - until it calls for violence. If you doubt this, imagine how quickly immigration authorizes - and the same progressives supporting Khalil - would pounce on a neo-Nazi from Germany who came to America and was given a "green card" but then participated in rallies in which people chanted "death to Jews."
..... With Khalil, another concern that ought to be raised is whether he and other at Columbia followed tactical instructions for their protest that had been represented issued by Hamas. These allegations were outlined recently in a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York by a variety of Jewish civil rights groups.
..... To discount such claims - as far too many progressives have done - is foolish and shortsighted. anyone who doubts this should look back to the sermons by Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman of Jersey City [NJ] - the so-called "blind sheik."
..... Abdel-Rahman, who had lost h8is eyesight, had been allowed to live in America after he claimed he would be imprisoned or killed if he returned to Egypt. So how did he tank America?
..... From his pulpit at a Jersey City [NJ] mosque - and with his presumption of free speech and the protection of a "green card" - abdel-Rahman;s continued call for violence against non-Muslims and Western culture inspired a group of Jersey City [NJ] Islamist to set off a massive bomb in 1993 at New York's World Trade Center. Six people were killed. Hundreds mr4eo were injured. Abdel-Rahman was eventually convicted of federal seditious conspiracy charges lined to the trade center attack and shipped of to prison, where he died. Less than a decade later, the Trade Center's Twin Towers were destroyed by another group of Islamist terrorists who followed the same kind of death-to-America dictum of Abdel-Rahman.
..... This is not to say Mahmoud Khalil is a 21-scntery reincarnation of Omar Abdel-Rahman or even the followers of Osama bin Laden who staged the attacks on September 11, 2001. But why ignore anyone who calls for "death to America" - a phase that is almost a word-for woad echo of what Abdel-Rahman said bin-Landen preached?
..... By itself, the federal lawsuit detailing the links between Hamas and the Columbia protesters certainly offer a formidable set of reasons to investigate Khalil. If true, the evidence should be reasons enough to deport him and possibly other non-citizens involved in the Colombia protest - and those at other campuses.
..... Did the Trump administration bother to read the lawsuit? Is it even aware that such a lawsuit exists?
..... Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia's case is more complicated - but not to the point when he should be granted blanket permission to remain in the U.S.
..... Abrego Garcia came to America legally from his native El Salvador, in 2011. He was just 16 years old. No one dispute that his violated US. immigration laws to illegally crossing America's borders. He merely slipped under the immigration radar - like millions of others undocumented migrants.
..... Abrego Garcia got married - to a U.S. citizen. He have worked steadily most reconnect as a unionized sheet metal labor. And there is no evidence he committed any crimes. In fact, he regularly checks in with the U.S. Immigrant A customs Enforcement office.
..... But evidence surfaced five years ago that Abrego Garcia has ties to the violent MS-13 Salvadoran gang. U.S. authorities brought him before an immigration judge in 2019, and he claimed he would be killed if he was deported to El Salvador. The judge sided with Abrego Garcia and let him remain in America.
..... It needs to be said her that the evidence is thin on both sides of Abrego Garcia's story. His alleged links to MS-13 are murky - at best. At the same time, it's not all that clear that Abrego Garcia's life would be endangered if he was deported back to El Salvador as an undocumented immigrant. who is this guy really?
..... such a dilemma should lead to an obvious question: why didn't Trump immigration authorities simply call for another court hearing before arresting Abrego Garcia and putting him on a plane with other gang members - all of whom were taken to a notorious prison for t4errorists in el Salvador that seem like a modern version of "Devil's Island"? U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed this week [04/22/2025] that she has evidence of Abrego Garcia's gang membership. Fine. Why not present that evidence in a court?
..... Even the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling, has ordered the Trump administration to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return. But in a Catch-22-lie turn, the Trump administration claims it can;t order the government of El Salvador to send a Salvadoran citizen to the U.S. And El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele, in meeting with Trump at the White House this week [04/21/2025] and discussing Abrogo Garcia's fate, asked: "How can I return him to America?" and "What do I do?"
..... Can we all ask. "Huh?"
..... You don't need to be a lawyer - or even a first-year law student - to understand how the cases of Khalil and Abrego Garcia raise questions about such basic rights as due process, unlawful imprisonment and the right to confront your accusers ion court.
..... We value these rights in America.
..... Does the Trump administration?
..... Right now, we don't really know.

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