Disappearances, Distractions, and A Letter from Mahmoud Khalil

Plus, are you ready to fight?

Hi Everyone!

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Sorry this is a day late. A number of life circumstances conspired against me to make a Thursday newsletter impossible. But I’m here now, so let’s get into it. And fair warning, this is a heavy one. Not sure what isn’t these days, but thought I’d say it nevertheless.

Topics this week:

- What are you prepared to do against the Trump administration?

- Disappearances by the administration

- Some recent historical context for our oppression of Mahmoud Khalil

- Disability Rights Watch

- Staying grounded in Khalil’s words

- And register for our monthly Zoom call

What Are You Prepared to Do against Trump?

How far are you willing to go to resist the spread of authoritarianism? How much of your time, money, and personal wellbeing can you spend or risk? What government actions will trigger specific acts of resistance from you? These are questions we all need to be asking ourselves now. Not later. It has to be ahead of time. If you haven’t already thought these things through for yourself and discussed them with your loved ones, your most likely response to each new thing Trump does will be inaction.

The administration is heading down several dark roads right now, a couple of which I’ll discuss below. Trump is taking some clear steps toward a degree of authoritarianism we haven’t seen in this country for some time. I know it’s possible Trump backs off his most extreme actions. But maybe he doesn’t. He might obey court orders. Maybe not. Perhaps he’ll respond to negative poll numbers. Or maybe he won’t. We can’t know until it happens. And then we’ll be ready to respond, or not.

We also need to get clear on why we will or will not resist. For me, this means focusing on the people whom increased authoritarianism will harm. Standing up for the idea of America and its values broadly doesn’t motivate me. This is largely because those “values” often don’t correlate to the country’s behavior, and are therefore not really its values. It’s also because of my extensive experience with Christians making an idol out of America. So I need to make sure I zoom in closely on the many ideas, norms, and institutions here worth defending. Often we at KTF talk about when the interests of institutions and people are at odds. Trump is pushing me to think more about when they’re aligned.

Finally, there’s an obvious criticism that pops up in my mind right about now, but it’s not a helpful one. Why is now the time to “get serious” in this way? Lots of people have been suffering in a million different ways around the country and the world before this. And Trump told us what he was going to do during his campaign. Why wasn’t I counting the cost then? There are many answers, but the shortest and simplest is: irrelevant. Plenty of good can come from answering all those questions, but that doesn’t change what I do now. It doesn’t make sense to stop yourself from doing something solely because you haven’t already started. So if you haven’t, start. Have those conversations. Know your principles. Make safety and contingency plans if needed. Don’t skip addressing the emotions you feel while doing all that. And get ready to improvise because authoritarianism often proceeds unpredictably. We’re with you, and so are millions of others.

Trump’s Disappearances

A few related stories are lighting the path down one of the above-mentioned dark roads. Earlier this week, immigration activists in New Mexico said 48 immigrants were missing after ICE raids across the state. No one has knowledge of their whereabouts. no one has had contact with them. Nothing. As of Wednesday, ICE still wasn’t saying where any of them were or whether they had spoken to anyone outside immigration detention. It was however saying that many of them had been deported. To what country? Unclear.

The importance of that last question has increased because, as you have likely heard, ICE recently deported 238 Venezuelan citizens to El Salvador on the pretext that they were all members of a dangerous gang. The Salvadoran government declared a seemingly endless state of emergency in 2019 due to gang violence. President Nayib Bukele has used the powers that declaration gives him to house tens of thousands of people in one enormous prison on a mere suspicion of gang affiliation. Prisoners cannot communicate with the outside. They don’t receive sufficient medical treatment. They are in cells with dozens of other men sleeping on bare metal cots. Their families don’t know if they are alive. Plus, torture and other human rights abuses are common in Salvadoran prisons. That’s where we sent the 238 Venezuelan people over the weekend. And just in the last 24 hours, we’re starting to get some stories of men on those flights with no connection to any gang and no criminal records. We know at least one was in the country legally as an asylum seeker.

Bukele is popular in his country because he has in fact decreased gang activity. This makes him and his upstart political party a blueprint for other authoritarian leaders in the region. And American conservatives love him. You can listen to or read the transcript of a really insightful episode of Latino USA about Bukele and his ties to the US to learn more. But the overall point is that Trump is disappearing vulnerable immigrants, and sending others to those who will happily disappear them for us. Trump will make excuses, many of which we will not be able to verify because the people with the relevant knowledge will have vanished. Both the New Mexico and El Salvador cases are facing significant legal challenges, which is great. But there’s no denying we’ve taken strides toward authoritarianism, and many tens of millions of Americans are fine with it. Followers of Jesus, in contrast, have to be people who stick with universal human dignity and respect for human rights even when MAGA insists anything happening to “those” people is justified.

Mahmoud Khalil and Sami Al-Arian

A plug for remembering history. And for remembering that when unjust methods of repression don’t meet sufficient resistance, oppressive regimes will keep using them. Over 20 years ago, the federal government indicted University of South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian on charges related to supporting terrorism. They tortured him with solitary confinement for three years as his case proceeded. Eventually, a jury acquitted him of all the most serious charges, and deadlocked on the lesser ones. What was the government’s evidence against him? Nothing. Truly nothing. At trial, the prosecutors primarily showed that Al-Arian was an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, and that he owned books containing opinions sympathetic to terrorist groups. But they had nothing linking him to any terrorist activity. His story is much longer and more harrowing than that. But ultimately, he agreed to plead guilty to a lower-level crime and be deported to Turkey so that he and his family could escape the US.

Al-Arian’s case is one of many post-9/11 injustices committed in the name of anti-terrorism. The most recent headline to fit this same bill is Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest at Columbia university. A lot of people have said a lot of things about Khalil in recent days. But I want to focus on this: the government has nothing on him. Trump is arguing they will revoke his green card based on undisclosed intelligence that he lent support to Hamas. The problem is of course, like the lies about steeling the 2020 election, Trump will eventually have to show this evidence in a court. You can’t just say the word “intelligence” and deport a green card holder. You need to demonstrate they have engaged in behavior that warrants revocation of legal permanent residence. I’d put money on this being an Al-Arian-type situation where the government will try to abuse Khalil until he voluntarily leaves because they don’t have a case. And if you believe somewhere there is real evidence against Khalil that Trump has kept quiet due to his grave respect for security protocols, I have a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge for you. Let’s keep up fighting this one as hard as we should have fought so many things 20 years ago.

Disability Rights Watch

As we talked about in last month’s bonus podcast, a not-at-all-secret Trump administration political tactic is to flood the media with stories to overwhelm journalists and readers. One story (or really, series of stories) that hasn’t frequently broken through the noise this year is the hits disability rights, policy, and programs are taking due to Trump administration job and funding cuts, plus formal policy changes. These actions will prevent many people from living independent and healthy lives, and kill many others. But they will do so from a distance and without the direct malice of a case like Khalil’s. Apathy expressed through alterations to policy is harder to track than hatred, and it provokes smaller emotional responses. but it is often equally deadly. Fortunately, there’s a great resource for following the unfolding developments on this subject . It’s called Disability Rights Watch, and it’s run by disability activists and allies. Right now, it’s primarily a website, so following it in the usual ways we follow things nowadays is difficult. I personally use this iOS RSS reader (remember those?). Hopefully the group behind the site will be able to expand their online presence soon. But you can read as an effort to love your disabled neighbors through attention and, I pray, some political action as well.

- Read Disability Rights Watch

Staying Grounded with the words of Mahmoud Khalil

If you haven’t read it yet, Khalil dictated a letter from his cell in Louisiana. It is not particularly easy to read, but it is exceptionally clear-eyed about his situation and this country’s behavior toward immigrants and Palestinians. His personal experience, years of activism, and present circumstances have honed his words and sense of purpose to a sharp point. He invites us to ask a simple question: “Who has the right to have rights?” He also knows something that we all should recognize. “[M]y detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation.” The administration hasn’t tried this hard to oppress anyone it doesn’t find threatening. Let Khalil’s words be an encouragement to dedicate more of yourself to a justice movement that is working. Maybe let him help you rethink some of your answers to my questions at the beginning of this post.

- Read Khalil’s letter

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