Crossing the Line

For those who aren’t paying attention — and, honestly, that’s not an acceptable way to live right now — we have not yet hit 60 days of the Donald Trump presidency, and the obsession with deportation is already not just toeing a constitutional line, it’s leapt fully across, into deeply troubling territory.

There is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student who was arrested by federal authorities and detained at a facility in Louisiana. He is a green card holder, which means he is a permanent resident of the United States, according to federal law. He is not in the country on a visa that can be revoked.

His crime? Well, he hasn’t committed one. The Department of Homeland Security told Khalil: “The secretary of state has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

He has been a regular pro-Palestinian protester at Columbia, and he has made no attempt to hide his identity. It seems a clear-cut case of an arrest solely based on his political beliefs: The government has tried, but failed, to connect him to terrorism in some vague way, but the attempt to deport him seems likely only to make him a wealthy man once his arrest is overturned in court for the sham it is. Even strongly pro-Israel commentators at the national level are protesting the blatantly unconstitutional detention.

Then again, there’s no reason to think the administration will listen to the courts. An attempt to deport hundreds of mostly Venezuelan immigrants, accused of being gang members, to a notorious El Salvador prison was stopped by a federal judge on Saturday. The president deported the men anyway, based on an 18th century wartime declaration — despite the fact that we are not at war.

The speed with which Trump’s rhetoric about “invaders” and the need to send people outside America’s borders, lawfully or not, is clear evidence of the wrongheaded nature of the entire enterprise. Without question, some of the people involved are dangerous — not all — but that is no justification for shredding our constitutional values.

Benjamin Franklin’s quote, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety,” has never been more relevant. This deportation escalation is un-American; the most frightening part is that we’re already here, less than two months into a presidency that seems hellbent to cross the line even further in the days, weeks and months to come.