When a lawful permanent resident is arrested for participating in campus protests and ordered deported under a rarely-used "foreign policy" provision, what do religious traditions and the Constitution say about whether the First Amendment protects non-citizens?
Religious traditions across the board treat the persecution of unpopular speakers — particularly strangers within the community — as a marker of unjust authority. The First Amendment has, since at least 1945, been understood to protect the speech of non-citizens residing in the United States. The current invocation of a rarely-used 1952 "foreign policy consequences" provision against a green-card holder for participating in a protest tests whether that understanding still holds. The chilling effect is already documented and substantial: non-citizens across American universities are now effectively limited in their participation in American political life. That may be the intended outcome. Whether it is consistent with the First Amendment is a question the courts are now answering, in real time, with consequences for every non-citizen in the country.
Religious perspectives
Religious traditions speak with rare unanimity about the rights of those who speak unpopular truths — and about the special obligation owed to strangers within the community.
Christianity: The early Christians were, in Roman eyes, exactly the kind of people Mahmoud Khalil represents in the modern American eye — visible members of a community deeply skeptical of the empire's policies, accused of disloyalty for what they would not say (refusing to burn incense to Caesar) and what they would say (proclaiming a kingdom not of this world). The Roman state used many of the same legal mechanisms against them: charges that conflated political speech with criminal threat. The Christian tradition's identification with those persecuted for speech is not an accident; it is central. "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me" (Matthew 5:11) is, among other things, a teaching about the rights of unpopular witnesses.
Judaism: The Torah's repeated command to "love the stranger" (36 times — more than any other commandment) is not abstract. It includes the recognition that strangers within the community are particularly vulnerable to state power and require explicit protection. "When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong" (Leviticus 19:33). The prophetic tradition extended this to include the right of those strangers to speak — Jeremiah was thrown into a cistern for unpopular speech, and the tradition treats him as a martyr, not as a properly punished disruptor.
Islam: The Quran's command to "stand firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even if it be against yourselves" (4:135) is universal — it does not depend on whether the witness is a citizen of the state in question. The Prophet Muhammad himself was, for much of his ministry, exactly a non-citizen religious dissident under hostile state power. His Constitution of Medina explicitly protected the speech and religious practice of non-Muslim residents.
The shared principle: Religious traditions identify the right of dissident speech — including by those who are not full members of the political community — as one of the most basic markers of just authority. The state that punishes a green-card holder for participating in a protest is doing exactly what the New Testament Romans, the prophetic tradition's Babylonians, and the Quran's Meccans were doing — and the religious traditions that have endured for thousands of years did not endure by being silent about it.
Constitutional & legal framework
The constitutional question of First Amendment protection for non-citizens has a clear answer in long-standing Supreme Court precedent — and the Khalil case is testing whether that answer still holds.
The facts:
- Mahmoud Khalil: Graduate student at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Lawful permanent resident (green-card holder). Participated in 2024 Columbia campus protests over the Gaza war.
- Arrest (March 8, 2025): ICE agents arrested Khalil inside his campus apartment building. He was detained in Louisiana.
- Legal basis: Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely-used 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act provision permitting deportation when an alien's presence would have "adverse foreign policy consequences." The provision had been used fewer than a dozen times in the prior 70 years.
- Immigration court (April 2025): Judge Jamee Comans ruled Khalil deportable on the foreign-policy ground, and separately ruled he was deportable for allegedly omitting organization memberships from his green-card application.
- Federal court (June 2025): A federal judge in New Jersey ordered Khalil's release, finding the government's actions were likely unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech.
- Federal appeals (January 2026): A federal appeals panel reversed the release order, bringing the government one step closer to deportation.
- Board of Immigration Appeals (April 10, 2026): Denied Khalil's appeal.
The First Amendment doctrine:
- Bridges v. Wixon (1945): The Supreme Court held that "freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country." The case involved an attempted deportation of a labor organizer for his political associations.
- Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972): Recognized that the First Amendment limits the government's power to exclude aliens whose entry would expose Americans to certain ideas. The case involved exclusion of a Marxist scholar.
- Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (1999): The Court declined to extend the First Amendment's retaliation doctrine fully to deportation proceedings, but its reasoning has been criticized and the question of speech-based deportation remains contested.
The "adverse foreign policy" provision: 8 U.S.C. §1182(a)(3)(C) permits exclusion or deportation when the Secretary of State certifies that an alien's presence "would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences." The provision was originally drafted with foreign diplomats and intelligence agents in mind. Its application to a lawful permanent resident who participated in protests is unprecedented in modern practice.
The retaliation doctrine: The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment prohibits government retaliation against individuals for protected speech (Hartman v. Moore, 2006; Nieves v. Bartlett, 2019). The challenge in the deportation context is that the executive has broad authority over immigration enforcement, and courts have been reluctant to second-guess specific enforcement decisions even where retaliation is alleged.
The chilling effect: Whatever happens to Khalil specifically, the case has produced predictable effects. Universities report international students avoiding political activity. Faculty have advised non-citizen students not to write op-eds or attend protests. Speech that was previously protected has been effectively chilled, regardless of whether any single prosecution ultimately succeeds.
The deeper structural question: If the "foreign policy consequences" provision can be invoked to deport a green-card holder for participating in a domestic protest, every non-citizen in the United States exists under the implicit threat that speech the administration dislikes can result in deportation. That is a meaningful change to what the First Amendment has been understood to protect — and one made through executive interpretation rather than through congressional revision of the statute or constitutional amendment.
See: First Amendment → | 8 U.S.C. §1182 → | Bridges v. Wixon →
Sources cited:BibleConstitutionSupreme Court