Newsmax judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano pushed back after the Trump administration claimed to have a right to deport pro-Palestinian organizer Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student who holds a U.S. green card.
During a Thursday segment on Newsmax, Napolitano explained that the Trump administration had detained Khalil without alleging a crime.
"I think he expressed political opinions that the Trump administration rejects, and that can hardly be the basis for a deportation," the analyst remarked. "I make that statement on the basis of having read the charging documents against him, filed in the immigration court and presented to Judge Furman yesterday, they allege no behavior that's unlawful. They allege no crime. They allege no activity on the Columbia campus."
"They simply allege the opinion of Marco Rubio, who probably doesn't even know this guy exists, as the Secretary of State, that his presence in the United States presents a danger to American foreign policy," he continued. "Well, guess what? We don't punish people on the basis of that. They're going to have to come up with something a lot more concrete and unlawful in order to justify his deportation."
Napolitano argued that Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, should be made to testify after he claimed the activist was a "national security threat."
"If I were his defense lawyers, I'd subpoena Tom Homan," he explained. "Now, I'm saying this as a longtime, longtime friend of Tom Homan, because what he said about this guy and the presser that you just ran is totally inconsistent with what the government said about him in court."
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In remarks on Wednesday, Homan also argued there was a "limit" to free speech rights.
"When you are on campuses -- I hear 'speech,' 'freedom of speech,' 'freedom of speech' -- can you stand at a movie theater and yell fire? Can you slander? Free speech has limitations," he said. "Coming to this country either on a visa or becoming a resident alien is a great privilege, but there are rules associated with that. You might have been able to get away with that stuff in the last administration, but not this administration."
