He Tweeted Charlie Kirk “Won’t Be Remembered as a Hero.” The State Dept. Revoked His Visa
As part of the Trump administration s drive to lionize the late Charlie Kirk and chill criticism of his politics the State Department disclosed on Tuesday that it had revoked visas for a half-dozen noncitizens who had celebrated his assassination in modern weeks online The State Department shared the offending remarks in a thread on X redacting the posters handles and avatars Several of the comments were crass and incendiary the kind of protected political speech at the heart of the First Amendment which applies to citizens and noncitizens alike One Argentine suggested that Kirk should rest in fucking piss because of his life devoted to spreading racist xenophobic misogynistic rhetoric while a Brazilian national asserted that Kirk DIED TOO LATE Nota Baloyi a South African who spoke to The Intercept on Wednesday had his visa revoked for tweeting that Kirk won t be remembered as a hero He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash Baloyi advised The Intercept that he deleted his post from X after South African right-wingers flagged it for the State Department by tagging Secretary of State Marco Rubio who tweeted in the days after Kirk s death that visa revocations were under way and that noncitizens who were cheering on the community assassination of a political figure should prepare to be deported Baloyi disputed that his post was mocking or making light of Kirk s death While the regime can revoke visas for a multitude of reasons the First Amendment forbids it from doing so based on viewpoint I was keeping this matter to myself until the State Department posted about it declared Baloyi who is at this time in South Africa and last visited the U S in Last Friday he received a brief email notification from the U S consular office revoking his visa The message made no reference to his social media activity I thought right away what could I have done he disclosed He realized what was happening after the State Department shared his post on Tuesday I was being targeted because I m an enemy of rightwing South Africans Baloyi noted especially those who have been going around the world and pleading to the Trump administration to let them in as refugees and casualties of a nonexistent white genocide Baloyi s remarks and others flagged by the State Department are all examples of core political speech according to attorneys who slammed the revocations as blatantly unconstitutional This is a profound threat to free expression wrote Brian Hauss senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union s Speech Privacy and Innovation Project in a report to The Intercept The authorities is weaponizing immigration law to punish people for expressing disapproved opinions These kinds of visa revocations are censorship plain and simple wrote Carrie DeCell senior staff attorney and legislative advisor at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University Related Judge Finds Rubio and Noem Intentionally Targeted Pro-Palestine Activists to Chill Speech Mere mockery can t be grounds for adverse executive action whether revocation of broadcast licenses or revocation of visas DeCell added While the authorities can revoke visas for a multitude of reasons the First Amendment forbids it from doing so based on viewpoint Last month in a lawsuit brought by the Knight Institute on behalf of professors and academics nationwide a federal judge ruled that Rubio and Department of Homeland Precaution Secretary Kristi Noem had unconstitutionally targeted noncitizens for deportation and detention based on political speech namely criticism of Israel s war on Gaza Secretaries Noem and Rubio are engaged in a mode of enforcement leading to detaining deporting and revoking noncitizens visas solely on the basis of political speech and with the intent of chilling such speech and that of others similarly situated wrote Judge William G Young a Reagan appointee to the federal court in Massachusetts in his ruling Such conduct is not only unconstitutional but a thing virtually unknown to our constitutional tradition In the email notification to Baloyi who shared a copy with The Intercept the State Department invoked the same broad law the Trump administration used to target R meysa zt rk and other college students for deportation earlier this spring section i of the Immigration and Nationality Act That provision which is at this moment being challenged by candidate journalists as unconstitutional to the extent it s used to target noncitizens based on their speech grants the Secretary of State broad authority to revoke allowing the secretary to revoke visas at any time in his discretion Julia Rose Kraut a legal historian and author of a book about the American history of ideological deportation revealed that this form of political targeting has a longstanding legacy in the United States Historically the United States has used ideological exclusions and deportations and the threat of such exclusions and deportations as tools of political repression to suppress dissent Kraut wrote in an email to The Intercept And this has invariably resulted in a chilling effect on freedom of expression and association Eric Lee a Michigan-based immigration attorney who offered to represent the targeted visa holders pro bono communicated The Intercept that the State Department s efforts to censor criticisms of Charlie Kirk were part-and-parcel of a larger anti-democratic operation The Trump administration is banning speech with which it disagrees from criticism of the genocide in Gaza to criticism of fascism which it now calls anti-American or even domestic terrorism Lee wrote in an email We will do what we can in the courts but the population now must stand up and oppose the drive to dictatorship Baloyi commented he has plans to return to the U S next February for a business trip He expects his immigration attorney will be able to convince the State Department to reverse this unfair and discriminative act and grant him a new visa The State Department did not respond to The Intercept s questions about the constitutional basis for revoking visas over political statements The post He Tweeted Charlie Kirk Won t Be Remembered as a Hero The State Dept Revoked His Visa appeared first on The Intercept
