President Donald Trump faces mounting legal challenges to his recent deportation efforts. While Trump argues the deportations are necessary for national security, critics say that they violate fundamental civil rights. A U.S. federal court rejected his administration’s attempt to dismiss Palestinian rights activist Mahmoud Khalil’s legal challenge against his detention and deportation.
Trump also faces resistance from the chief judge of the D.C. District Court, who temporarily blocked the deportation of 238 Venezuelan men to a forced labor prison in El Salvador who Trump had labeled as “gang members.” The judge found no evidence sufficient to support that accusation, and family members of those deported insist that they had no criminal record. Trump justifies deporting the alleged Venezuelan gang members under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, citing the Tren de Aragua gang as a serious threat to U.S. security.
Watch the video above as Straight Arrow News contributor Star Parker argues that the judges are wrong — Trump has the authority to deport Khalil and the Venezuelans. She also claims progressives misinterpret non-citizens’ “rights” and that Trump is keeping his promise to protect the country.
The following is an excerpt from the above video.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has determined that the presence and the activities of pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil “would have serious adverse policy consequences for the United States and that he should be deported.” This has angered progressive activists, and we can see them in the streets already. All the tensions are growing, and they were further enraged when President Trump deported hundreds of gang members, many of whom belonged to groups that he has designated as terrorist organizations.
Khalil acted as one of the lead negotiators for a pro-Hamas student group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest (Cuad). Remember when we saw that tension last year, the year before? They referred to Hamas’ October 7, 2027 slaughter of Israelis as a “moral, military and political victory.” And they said it is fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.
Really? The power to exclude is a defining feature of what it means to be a sovereign nation, and America is a sovereign nation. Khalil is not a U.S. citizen. He has a green card, and he’s a legal alien, but he has a green card. He can remain on our soul when our sovereign nation consents otherwise, he can be deported. Progressives are claiming that Khalil’s due process rights have been violated.
The former Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia, he had cited a different perspective. In 2001, he had a dissent, and he said, “Due process does not invest any alien with a right to enter the United States, nor confer on those admitted the right to remain against the national will.”