If Trump can deport pro-Palestine activists, journalists could be next

Free speech advocates are rightly outraged by the Trump administration’s arrest — no, abduction — of Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil. But it’s shortsighted to view the threat as limited to college students, immigrants, or pro-Palestine activists.

Yes, it’s fair to say that the people most similarly situated to Khalil are the ones at the highest immediate risk. But authoritarianism is a slippery slope. President Donald Trump fantasized on social media last week about throwing people who protest Tesla into Salvadorian prisons, without regard for their citizenship status.

Raphael Satter, an American journalist who covers cybersecurity for Reuters, likely has a clearer view than most about where this could all be headed. Until his reporting led to its revocation, Satter also held overseas citizen of India status — a special multipurpose visa designation for certain people of Indian origin or those married to an Indian national.

In 2023, Satter reported on Indian tech executive Rajat Khare and his company Appin’s alleged hack-for-hire business. The revelations in Satter’s reporting prompted a global censorship campaign driven by Khare and his lawyers and facilitated by Indian courts. Through lawsuits and legal threats, they managed to have Satter’s article and other reports about Khare largely removed from the internet.

Reuters recently reposted Satter’s article after a judge lifted an order to delete it. But that wasn’t the end of the story. On the same day that censorship order was first issued, India revoked Satter’s overseas citizenship, stating in a letter that the revocation was the result of Satter “practicing journalism without proper permission,” which had been “maliciously creating adverse and biased opinion against Indian institutions in the international arena.”

Satter recently filed his own lawsuit to restore his status. He told The Guardian that the revocation of his OCI had “effectively cut me off from members of my family and a country I hold in great affection and respect.”

One thing that’s remarkable about Satter’s case is that his article didn’t criticize (or even mention) Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his administration. Nor did it contradict the administration’s position on a major international issue, in contrast with Khalil’s disagreement with the Trump administration’s vision of obliterating Gaza to build resorts.

Instead, it was critical of a corporation and business executive — one who, as far as we know, doesn’t even have close ties to the Modi administration. Most of the events Satter reported on occurred over a decade ago, before Modi came to power in 2014. Khare apparently lives in Switzerland these days.

But a journalist suggesting the mere existence of corporate crime in India was enough for the government to retaliate against him for making it look bad. It goes to show that once a government claims the power to use residency status as a cudgel to regulate speech, things escalate quickly and unpredictably.

Sure, India under Modi is, in many ways, further along on the path toward authoritarianism than the United States. The Modi administration censors its critics in ways that Trump perhaps can’t — at least not yet.

But it would be naive to think we’re that far behind. Case in point: in response to financial pressure from Trump, Columbia is reportedly (and inexcusably) investigating an op-ed writer who criticized Israel. As Chip Gibbons recently detailed in Jacobin, Khalil’s case is just the latest chapter in a long history of abuse of immigration laws to stifle dissent.

And Columbia’s journalism school is already telling non-American student journalists that they’re at risk of deportation for reporting on the Israel-Gaza war or related protests. Professors have been unfairly criticized for acknowledging this reality, but Satter’s case shows how right they are.

The administration publicly justifies its actions against Khalil by citing alleged support for terrorism, but tellingly, the authority the administration is actually using to deport him is not derived from anti-terrorism laws — which there is no evidence he violated.

Instead, it’s citing an amorphous immigration provision that Trump can invoke (unless the courts or Congress stop him) whenever he concocts “foreign policy” concerns. To Trump, that means disagreeing with him on foreign policy, as journalists are prone to do.

Journalists from around the world report from perspectives that American journalists can’t, and reach communities that American journalists don’t. To state the obvious, the ability to live here allows them to do a better job of that.

And in some cases, their work here could guarantee them a prison sentence, or worse, if they’re deported — that’s the situation Voice of America reporters from Russia and other antidemocratic regimes may find themselves in if Trump’s efforts to dismantle the agency are allowed to stand.

In the past, Americans could shake their heads when they read stories like Satter’s and assure themselves that, whatever problems we may have, that kind of thing won’t happen here. No more.

Satter’s case is a not-so-farfetched cautionary tale — if a few years down the line we’re expelling journalists who offend Trump or his oligarchs, we can’t say we weren’t warned.