Our First Amendment rights are coming under attack.
On the evening of March 8, Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was detained by plainclothes officers who said they worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to an article by Associated Press News.
A day later, Khalil was discovered to have been brought to a detention facility over 1,300 miles away in Louisiana, having not been charged with a crime as stated by New York Civil Liberties Union. According to the New York Times, Khalil has been denied a chance to speak with his lawyer, and has been cut off from the outside world. Khalil, a legal resident of the United States, is now being threatened with deportation.
This doesn’t end at Khalil. When President Donald Trump was elected in November, he promised to crack down on pro-Palestinian students and the “radical left,” whom he argued had infiltrated college campuses, passing Executive Order 14188 (“Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism”) and giving himself the authority to pursue this assault. Wielding ICE as a weapon, Trump has gone on a national offensive targeting Palestinian solidarity organizers and immigrant students who speak up on the Palestinian cause.
Cornell University student Momodou Taa, a Gambian-British citizen who is in the United States on a visa, is also being threatened with deportation for political activity, as reported by the New York Times. ICE recently visited residences to arrest and deport Yunseo Chung, a legal permanent resident and student at Columbia University, who has participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The deployment of ICE to crack down on the immigrants who dare to speak their mind in protests is a clear violation of their rights. If the government can do this, then what next? The civil liberties of all Americans hangs in the balance.
The targeting of student activists by ICE likely represents the first chapter in a repressive era of American politics. The Trump administration’s attempt to censor activist speech doesn’t stop there – it is real and rampant, spreading to all of us.
For example, Trump has threatened to withhold funding to institutions that he argues uses Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statements. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a national civil rights organization, the Supreme Court has ruled in the past that the government cannot weaponize defunding as a way to force programs to bend to a specific ideological belief, and that it violates the First Amendment.
The press, too, has come under assault. The dispute over the Associated Press’s refusal to use Trump’s touted “Gulf of America” led to their expulsion from the White House Newsroom. Not only that, but Trump himself has declared a new policy of personally picking reporters who can cover Trump from the Whitehouse, according to the new administration policy.
Democracy fundamentally depends on the protection of civil liberties. The First Amendment grants us the right to speak up and to speak out. It gives us freedom of speech, expression, assembly, religion, and press.
Our position is uncompromising: That any attempt to unjustly crack down on one of America’s most fundamental principles, that of being able to speak freely without fear of state repression, must be met with pushback.
People should not be charged, face deportation or live in fear for exercising their right to free speech. Thus, in a world where a national Trump administration increases its threats towards free speech, it is not our time to be silent – it’s our time to speak up and act.
It is also critical that state governments, local governments, publications and schools protect their communities. The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Additionally, California Education Code 48907 protects the freedom of the student press. These protections should be defended and expanded.
We also encourage students to know and exercise these rights when the pressure to comply with authority is high. Compliance to the administration’s new directives, unconditionally, will lead to further reprisals against unpopular speech down the line. Whether it means getting involved in existing civil rights organizations or simply refusing to self-censor, all students have a duty to fight for their rights.
Our country may be divided on a range of sociopolitical issues. But the right to free speech – a cornerstone of what allows us to write this in the first place – that is something we must unite together to protect.