US representative Mary Gay Scanlon is one of the three democrats circulating lists that the administration of President Donald J.
Khalil, who helped in conducting protests at Columbia University against civil victims in Gaza, was arrested by immigration officials and sent to custody in Louisiana. He is a regular lawyer in the United States who recently graduated from school.
Letter, co -author by the American representative Jamie Raskin (D., MD.), Ranking member in the Committee of the Chamber and the US representative of Pramili Jayapal, (D., Wash.), Ranking of a member of the immigration subcommittee, is directed to the secretary of the exemplary security Kristi and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Scanlon, whose district covers the entire Delaware and South Philadelphia and Montgomery unit, is a member of the court subcommittee ranking for the Constitution and a constrained government.
It was a second letter sent by Congress Democrats to Noem. On Tuesday, 14 Democrats, including the US representative Summer L. Lee, who represents Pittsburgh, signed a letter demanding immediate release of Khalil.
On Wednesday, the US District Judge Jesse M. Furman in New York ordered Khalil, 30 years ancient, would not be deported while the court is considering legal challenges brought by his lawyers.
Khalil, who is legally considered a indefinite US resident with a green card and has not been accused of crime, is a graduate at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and has completed his requirements for the master’s degree in December. He and his wife are expecting a child this spring and live in a convoluted of apartments belonging to the University near the campus.
On Saturday evening he was in the campus, when several immigration and right officers entered and took him to arrest, said Amy Greer, one of his lawyers. The agents told Greer that they were canceling the green Khalil card.
Greer said that agents initially refused to say on the phone why they detained Khalil and at some point hung up on her. Greer said that the agents then said that they were acting on the orders of the State Department to cancel their student visa. When she said there was no student visa and was a regular resident with a green card, the agents said that they would dismiss it instead.
Khalil, who was born in Syria and is the grandson of Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland, said his lawyer, was taken to New Jersey, and then was transferred to the immigration custody in Louisian.
Until Wednesday, the only representative of Pennsylvania who considered the case was Lee from Western Pennsylvania.
“Every member of the Congress should be outraged by this gross erosion of our constitutional rights. We are outside the slippery slope ” Lee said on the hill at the beginning of this week.
Rubio, talking to reporters in Ireland on Wednesday, defended arrest and accused Khalil of participating in anti-Semitic and progress protests. He said that born foreign immigrants could cancel their visas or green cards and be thrown to such activities.
According to New York Times, it’s not about freedom of speech, “said Rubio. “It’s about people who have no right to be in the United States to start with. Nobody has the right to a student visa. By the way, no one has the right to a green card. “
The design version of the new democratic letter, obtained by Inquirer, says that the arrest is based on “unclear language in the Act on immigration and nationality”, claiming that his speech has “ambiguous” consequences of foreign policy “for the United States and accuses the administration of lack of explanation of these consequences.
“This distribution of the dusty old statutory section in order to punish speech is a dangerous attack on both the first amendment and all, including the law of permanent residents who enjoy its protection,” the legislators wrote. “This maneuver causes foreign acts and Sedits as well as McCarthyism. It is a textbook of authoritars, not selected officials in a democratic society who claim that they are masters of freedom of speech. “
In the letter, Rubio and Noem asks how many times the section was used to place a legal indefinite resident in the removal proceedings and what grounds are with Khalil.
“Although there may be not a big speech of Mr. Khalil, his constitutional law in our democracy to express his political views,” says the letter. “That is why every American should be outraged by this insolent attempt to use the power of the US government to silence and punish people who do not agree with the sitting president.”
In January, Trump signed an executive ordinance against anti -Semitism, which directed what he described as “Hamas fans at university campus”. A spokesman for the Internal Security Department said that Khalil’s arrest was a fulfillment of the executive orders of Trump prohibiting anti -Semitism. The Trump administration claims that nationwide protests in solidarity with gauze are rather anti -Semitic, and not protected in the first amendment, demonstrations in Solidarity with Palestinians.
Columbia University has become the focal point of the American pro-Palestinian protest movement, which swept through university campus throughout the country.
Ramzi Kass, one of Khalil’s lawyers, told the judge at the Wednesday trial at Lower Manhattan that Khalil was “identified, targeted and detained” due to his support for Palestinian rights and his first protected amendment.
The press secretary of the White House Karoline Leavitt said that the administration moved to the deportation under the immigration and nationality law, which gives the secretary of the state the right to deport Nucosen on the basis of foreign policy.
Last weekIN The Trump administration pulled $ 400 million in financing from Columbia University, as well as nine other universities that had pro-gase demonstrations, claiming that schools did not take steps against anti-Semitism.
Kass, Khalil’s lawyer, said that the legal grounds cited by the government to stop Khalil were “unclear” and “rarely used” and hid the real reason: “retaliation and punishment for performing freedom of speech.”
Associated Press contributed to this article.
