by Philip Giraldi, The Unz Review:
“Nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times”
It has been another exciting week here in the Land of Oz, formerly known as the United States of America, which is currently going through an apparently overdue purging that will replace the rule of law with a whimsical process whereby the Chief Executive is empowered to decide everything in a new nation that will likely be renamed Trumpland. The transition has not been pretty, as part of the process is to deport all undesirables. As a result, countries that have been reckoned to be friends to the American people and government including Britain and Germany are now warning their citizens that they might want to reconsider plans to travel to the US as they might be detained by one or more of America’s law enforcement authorities even if their travel status is fully legal and they have not committed anything that might be considered a crime in the real world.
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Germany this week said it was investigating the cases of three of its citizens being denied entry and placed in detention when they tried to enter through the US southern border and Britain similarly was looking into the rejection of a citizen also trying to enter by way of Mexico. That adds to the list of nations seeking to distance themselves from policies coming out of Washington and which are preparing themselves to strike back against punitive tariffs, sanctions and arbitrary detentions, to include “Fifty-first state” Canada, Mexico, Panama and Greenland.
The European Foreign Ministries are no doubt basing their advice in part on the case of a French scientist who was arbitrarily denied entry to the United States this month over messages reported to be critical of President Trump’s administration’s research policies. Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister for higher education, shared how “he had learned with concern that a French academic who was going to a conference in Houston was denied entry before being deported” back to Europe. The academic, who was not named, was on assignment for France’s National Center for Scientific Research. Baptise explained “This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because this researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy. Freedom of opinion, free research and academic freedom are values that we will continue to proudly uphold. I will defend the possibility for all French researchers to be faithful to them, in compliance with the law.”
And America’s universities, which are being particularly targeted as they are hotbeds of the only capital crime that really matters currently, anti-semitism, are rolling over to escape the wrath of Jehovah’s Anointed in Washington by expelling students and faculty and even stripping graduates of their degrees after the fact. Focal points for pro-Palestinian demonstrations like Columbia University in New York City and the University of California in Los Angeles are demonstrating their loyalty to the new order just as fast as they can, clearly recognizing that allowing someone to speak up against the genocide of the Palestinians is to identify ipso facto by White House think as a terrorist. Columbia is, for example, allowing Homeland Security agents to come on to campus and, without a warrant or any claim of criminal activity, interrogating and detaining students in dorms and classrooms. Interestingly, however, there is payback developing from the students. One report suggests that students accepted for the incoming Columbia freshman class in September are changing their minds and canceling their attendance in large numbers.
The most prominent victim of the Trump Administration’s witch hunt continues to be Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate and a prominent organizer during last spring’s Gaza protests. He was arrested by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in front of his pregnant wife, who pleaded with the agents to explain what the charges against him were. Khalil was a permanent resident with a current green card, but it was revoked by the federal government along with his student visa. The Trump administration moved to have Khalil immediately deported, but the effort was initially blocked by a federal judge in New York. No one knew where Khalil was for an extended period of time, but it was eventually learned that he was being held in a detention facility in Louisiana. At his first court hearing, one learned that his attorneys had not been able to communicate with him.
The Trump team immediately celebrated Khalil’s ordeal. “This is the first arrest of many to come,” wrote the president in a Truth Social post. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act “Red scare” bit of legislation that authorized the government to target and remove “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
Last week two more Columbia students were targeted for deportation. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press release announced that Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman from the West Bank, was arrested in Newark, New Jersey by ICE agents for allegedly overstaying her F-1 student visa. She is currently being held at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. Kordia reportedly participated in last spring’s Gaza protests at the university. Also, Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian national and Fulbright Scholar at Columbia, fled the US over fears that she would be detained. She’s been in the United States for nearly ten years. “Having my visa revoked and then losing my student status has upended my life and future — not because of any wrongdoing, but because I exercised my right to free speech,” she explained to CNN in a statement.
