The media continue to fall over themselves in order to protect the reputations of suspected jihadists on our college campuses, as they face deportation pursuant to current immigration law. And once again, they continue to raise the free speech straw man as they attempt to create sympathies for these detainees.
Watch NBC’s report on Georgetown academic Bidar Khan Suri in its entirety (click “expand” to view full transcript):
LESTER HOLT: Tonight, temporarily blocking the deportation of a Georgetown University researcher, the Trump administration is looking to remove him from the country, accusing him of ties to a terror group. Gabe Gutierrez has late details.
GABE GUTIERREZ: Bidar Khan Suri, a graduate student and father of three from India who was teaching at Georgetown University, is now accused of having ties to a terror group. But late today, a federal judge temporarily blocked his deportation, after the ACLU filed an emergency motion.
SOPHIA GREGG: Freedom of speech in this country should never be limited. And it should never be chilled by the government.
SPOKESPERSON: But the idea that somehow he is a threat to our national security because of his views on the Israel/Palestine conflict is just ridiculous.
GUTIERREZ: But a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security says Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-semitism on social media.” A U.S. official tells NBC News his father-in-law was a Hamas advisor. Georgetown University says it is not aware of Suri engaging in illegal activity and that he was granted a visa to the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Trump administration is using a law that grants the Secretary of State power to deport visa holders whose presence has adverse foreign policy consequences.
MARCO RUBIO: We will continue to look for people that we never would have allowed into this country on student visas had we known they were going to do what they’ve done.
GUTIERREZ: Meanwhile, Columbia University is now signaling it will comply with the Trump administration's demands in return for restoring $400 million in federal funding, canceled because The White House accused Columbia of continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students. During pro-Palestinian protests, campus buildings were occupied and vandalized. Jewish student Shoshana Aufzien says she was trapped inside one of them.
SHOSHANA AUFZIEN: There comes a point where speech is, you know, it’s not protected anymore if you are inciting violence, if you’re supporting terrorism.
GUTIERREZ: As for the Georgetown graduate student, his lawyer says he’s done nothing wrong, and that he’s still in custody at a detention center in Louisiana. Lester.
HOLT: All right, Gabe. Thanks.
Once again, a terror-adjacent foreign national with a legal right to work and live in the United States is the beneficiary of the media’s deployment of a straw man defense. Whether it’s this Georgetown academic, or Mahmoud Khalil, or the Hezbollah doctor that was recently deported, the media’s defense of choice is free speech.
No one is looking to strip anyone’s free speech rights, and people are free to say what they want. In this case, though, there is some of that free speech that gets weighed against national security risks pursuant to federal law- which may lead to deportation of the individual that exercised that free speech. And no one is exempt from that.
By advocating for this academic with literal familial ties to Hamas, the medieval savages that executed the barbaric attacks on October 7th, the media remain stuck in their pattern of usefully idiotic terror apologia.
