Green card holder’s 1st Amendment rights should protect him from deportation
LA TimesTo the editor: The only thing contributing writer Josh Hammer gets right, when arguing that Mahmoud Khalil could be deported for being a noncitizen, is that he is an unsympathetic figure, but this does not mean we should be unconcerned about his case. Hammer conveniently ignores the 14th Amendment, which guarantees the due process and equal protection rights that shield all “persons” within U.S. jurisdiction, not citizens only, from federal and state government overreach. No doubt Khalil is an unsympathetic figure, but the administration does not get to stifle free speech and abrogate the 1st Amendment — either for U.S. citizens or visa holders. To the editor: The Supreme Court decided in Bridges vs. Wixon that resident aliens have 1st Amendment rights. The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes explained long ago that the government may not properly regulate unpopular viewpoints or attempt to drive them from the marketplace of ideas.
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