Andrew McCarthy: Does the Constitution really protect Columbia Agitator Mahmoud Khalil from deportation?

He was actually a mafia prosecutor and terrorism before starting to play one on television. In that sense, with the Trump administration pursuing its objective worth taking alien terrorist supporters outside our country, we must think of the first amendment, specifically, the rights of freedom of expression and free association.

So, at the risk of leaving rather, before talking about Mahmoud KhalilI want to talk to you about Tom Hagen.

Cinema fans will instantly remember Hagen (portrayed by Robert Duvall) such as the Crilone family of the iconic sponsor films in the early 1970s (adapted from Mario Puzo’s novels). Perhaps in his most memorable vignette, Hagen would tell you that he was a “mediator”, interceding in the name of Don Corleone with Jack Woltz, a famous Hollywood producer.

Trump promises the antiisraele activist Mahmoud Khalil was “the first arrest of many to come.”

Remember: Hagen tries to persuade Woltz that if he does not give a coveted role in a movie very anticipated to the godson of the gift, bad things are suitable for happening. And indeed, after rejecting Hagen, the “mediator”, the producer soon wakes up to find his head cut from his precious racing horse under his satin leaves soaked with blood. Having reached the right mind, Woltz gives the part to the godson.

We could say euphemistically that Hagen was there to “reason” with Woltz, to “turn it into an offer that he cannot reject.” In the law, however, we have a different word for this: extortion. That is a crime, like organized crime. In a court of the court, Tom Hagen would not have a defense that he simply talked to Woltz, who was only enjoying his right to free expression in the name of the corleons with whom he was freely associated.

We know this intuitively, and it is a principle of mother rock of criminal law. He First amendment It prevents the government from criminalizing the speech itself, it is not a crime to the pronounced words. It prevents the Government from criminalizing the mere meeting of two or more people: the mere association is not a crime.

However, if a person is credible for crimes such as extortionThere is no legal prohibition against the use of speech as evidence of these crimes. And if a person is accused in a credible conspiracy, there is no legal bar against presenting the association of conspirators with each other as evidence that they were joint participants in a criminal agreement.

Keep that in mind. We are already listening to Twaddle on the first amendment of the Khalil Apologists, the former student of Columbia University born in Syria. He affirms that the Palestinian inheritance and the Trump administration are trying to deport him about his role in the uprisings of the campus promoted by his support for Hamas, which has been formally designated a terrorist organization under US law for almost 30 years.

In a nutshell, the defense is like that. Khalil He is an alien legal resident (LPR), a green card holder. As a matter of law, that makes it an American person whose rights are approaching those of an American citizen. Ergo, cannot be legally expelled from the United States for constitutionally protected behavior: its association with other pro-break student agitators and their speech in its name as a “mediator” in interactions with the administration of Columbia. Now, there are a series of legal defects in this defense (I have outlined them in this national review essay). While LPRS’s rights are similar to those of US citizens, they are not identical. LPRs are still aliens. The Federal Immigration Law has long established that foreigners can be deported on criminal behavior, terrorist support and national security concerns, something that cannot be done to US citizens.

But I want to disagree with the basic premise that Khalil’s The behavior was nothing more than a constitutionally protected discourse and association by which no American would face legal consequences.

It seems that we understand that in cases of organized crimes. In all my years prosecuting them, I never listened to a defense lawyer to affirm that, when the boss told the button that “he gave that guy”, he was simply exercising his rights of freedom of expression.

However, when I started doing terrorism cases after the World Trade Center was bombarded in 1993, I discovered that jihadists would substantially make that argument, they would simply emit brilliantly about the veneration of our society of religious freedom and the political convictions to darken that they were doing it.

Don’t be fooled.

Khalil is not subject to deportation because he is Muslim or because he opposes the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. His political speech and his association with students of related ideas (whether Muslims or non -Muslims) are not the point, even if he and his followers would make you believe that they are the only point.

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When he “measured” on behalf of the agitators of the Campus, who had established an illegal camp that blocks other students to attend their studies and normal life on the campus, and who had illegally occupied and destroyed university buildings, was not involved in a political discourse. I was pressing the University to make concessions to the demands of pro-break agitators, with the understanding that if the administration did not capitulate, they would do more and worse damage to the campus.

That is not a political discourse. It is extortion. American citizens who participated in such behavior would not have a defense of the first amendment. They would probably face prosecution and, in fact, dozens of the agitators were arrested in relation to these activities, and can still face other legal consequences.

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Khalil does not present a deep constitutional controversy. His case is about the authority of the government, which is responsible for the safety of its citizens, to deport the aliens, even LPRS, which endanger us. That authority is recorded in the Constitution, as well as in the immigration and criminal laws of the United States.

Many years ago, I learned in cases involved in jihadists and their supporters who expect, once their lawyers begin to rule on the glories of our Constitution (the same Constitution Hamas would destroy in a beat), we will all verify our common sense at the door. Let’s not do that.

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