By Legal Editor Saori Shiroseki with Alison Porchnik on Morningside Heights
Allow us to wallow in some nostalgia for the good old days at Columbia. We remember one winter’s day at the Law School when our beloved Civil Procedure professor, keen to impress upon us the majesty of both Columbia and the Law, asked our class: “Who knows what it says on Kent Hall?”
To which one of our bright young classmates responded instantly: “Kent Hall.”
When the hilarity died down, our professor said that the answer, while technically correct, was not the one he wanted. (That happens a lot with law professors.)
What he was looking for was the inscription over one of the doorways of the former home of the Columbia Law School: "IVS EST ARS BONI ET AEQUI."
That’s Latin for "Law is the art of the good and the just."
How are goodness and justice doing these days at Columbia?
The short answer is: “Not so good.” The long answer is worse.
On the night of March 8, 2025, a Columbia graduate student living with his eight-month-pregnant wife was rousted in the lobby of his Columbia-owned apartment building (not a public space) by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. government agency charged with apprehending immigrants living in the United States.
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| Does he look happy to you? |
This student, one Mohammed Khalil, was told that his student visa was being cancelled (by whom?) and that he was being arrested, not on any criminal charge, but for civil detention in anticipation of his deportation from the United States.
When Mr. Khalil pointed out to the armed body-snatchers that he was not in fact living in Morningside Heights pursuant to a revocable student visa, but because he was a Lawful Permanent Resident of the United States (based unremarkably on his marriage to a US citizen), they were momentarily confused but then received their marching orders (which they followed):
Attorney Greer advised Agent Hernandez that Mr. Khalil is a lawful permanent resident and has the right to due process. Agent Hernandez responded that the Department of State had revoked Mr. Khalil’s green card, too, and that he would be brought in front of an immigration judge. ...Mr. Khalil’s wife presented the DHS agents with documents confirming Mr. Khalil’s status as a lawful permanent resident, handing them to an agent who was speaking on the phone. The agent looked confused when he saw the documents and said, “He has a green card” to the individual with whom he was on the phone. Mr. Khalil’s wife heard the agent repeat that they were being ordered to bring Mr. Khalil in anyway.
The law on LPR status is clear: there is no such thing as “cancelling” a green card on the whim of ICE. Permanent residents can’t be deported until they have had a chance to contest whatever charges are brought in an Immigration Court. There are specific grounds to revoke LPR or “green card” status, all related to serious misconduct such as committing various crimes or engaging in terrorist activity.
As you might imagine, there are Columbia Law Professors expert in this area, including Professor Eliora Mukerjee:
Revoking a green card is quite rare, said Elora Mukherjee, the director of the immigrants’ rights clinic at Columbia Law School, and in a vast majority of cases where it does happen, the holder has been accused and convicted of criminal offenses, she said.
If the government was to revoke Mr. Khalil’s green card “in retaliation for his public speech, that is prohibited by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” Ms. Mukherjee said,...
That seems clear enough to even the dimmest legal intelligence. We only wish our professors had been equally clear about the severability of contracts for the sales of goods under the UCC. [No one cares about your time at law school - Ed.]
After Mr. Khalil was shanghaied to an ICE lockup in the wilds of Louisiana, he was eventually presented with something called a Notice to Appear, which is the document that initiates removal proceedings. If as and when an Immigration Judge finds by clear and convincing evidence that a non-citizen is removable (and all appeals have been exhausted), their green card is indeed cancelled, which is a condign punishment for say robbing the Danville stage or committing other serious crimes of the sort that the January 6 terrorists received pardons for. The NTA was issued early on March 9, which means it could not have provided a lawful basis for the civil arrest on March 8:
Paragraph 3 is curious, because it states alternative bases for lawful admission to the United States, neither of which without more supports removal. The body-snatchers were unable to confirm when Khalil entered the US, so they simply admitted he did so legally. Then they had to admit he remained here legally too as an LPR.
The money paragraph is number 4, which invokes an obscure provision of a McCarthy-era immigration bill intended to boot those regarded as Communists and other baddies out of the country.
On what basis did Li'l Marco conclude that Khalil's continued presence on Morningside Heights have a serious adverse effect on U.S. foreign policy? None has been provided, and of course ICE will argue (in Immigration Court and otherwise) that his decision is unreviewable.
Sadly for the body-snatchers, that interpretation of the statute is fatally undercut by the word “reasonable,” which necessarily means that unreasonable conclusions do not support removal. When the immigration laws wish to vest unreviewable discretion in some government official, they say so.
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| Reminder: empowering Fascist vigilantes is not good for the Jews |
Whether the Republican bent Supreme Court will interpret this statute correctly is of course open to question because the six Republican Justices have shown a repeated inability to act as judges rather than unelected Republican politicians.
With so much catastrophe to deal with around the world (most caused by his boss), how did Li'l Marco even learn of Khalil's existence, much less his damage to U.S. foreign policy, whatever that is these days? (Khalil never spoke out against annexing Canada or Greenland, just to take two principal tenets of current foreign policy.)
It turns out that Khalil was targeted by certain self-appointed guardians of Jewish members of the Columbia community who were supposedly victims of anti-Semitism because they were forced to look at pro-Gaza demonstrations on or near the Columbia campus:
A far-right group that claimed credit for the arrest of a Palestinian activist and permanent US resident who the Trump administration is seeking to deport claims it has submitted “thousands of names” for similar treatment.
Betar US is one of a number of rightwing, pro-Israel groups that are supporting the administration’s efforts to deport international students involved in university pro-Palestinian protests, an effort that escalated this week with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who recently completed his graduate studies at Columbia University.
This week, Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was just “the first of many to come”. Betar US quickly claimed credit on social media for providing Khalil’s name to the government.
Betar, which has been labelled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish advocacy group, said on Monday that it had “been working on deportations and will continue to do so”, and warned that the effort would extend beyond immigrants. [What the f*** does that mean? – Ed.]
The group claims to have “documentation, including tapes, social media and more” to support their actions. It claims to be sharing names with several high-ranking officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; the White House homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller; and the attorney general, Pam Bondi, among others.
....[Betar leg-breaker Ross] Glick described Khalil as an “operative”. When asked who he was an operative for, he responded: “Well, that has to be determined.”
We're sure Ross will let us (and Li'l Marco) know when he finds out. So now we are outsourcing US immigration law to Jewish extremist vigilantes who want to suppress all pro-Palestinian speech.
Now it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a Jew heard an anti-Semitic remark, which is hate speech. If uttered by someone who is a member of the Columbia community, hate speech subjects the hater to university discipline.
It’s also not beyond the realm of possibility that one or more Jews, especially those who support the Likudnik project of annexing Gaza and the West Bank and cleansing them of their indigenous Palestinian population, either honestly or otherwise are affronted by the views of those who do not share their belief in conquest and ethnic cleansing. Such speech is not in fact anti-Semitism or hate speech, despite the best efforts of right-wing Jews (like the Betarniks) to stigmatize all opposition to the current Israeli Government and its violent policies as anti-Semitism.
If the Federal Government under the reign of the Tangerine-Faced Fascist or Columbia University seeks to punish any and all speech that a Likudnik doesn’t want to hear (and apparently it does), that position is antithetical to and indeed subversive of the First Amendment and the supposed academic freedom fundamental to the functioning of any institution of higher learning.
It’s not good and it’s not just.
And that’s why even though his hall still stands, Chancellor Kent is weeping.
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