Somewhat relevant: ICE detains British journalist after criticism of Israel on US tour
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/26/ice-detains-...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/26/ice-detains-...
(ICE's lack of transparency is a valid, but separate, concern, and The Guardian could have at least attempted to contact them before publishing speculation.)
That's always the way it works with secret police. The idea of due process of law and norm following is (1) expressly designed to provide assurances in cases like this and (2) being deliberately degraded and evaded by ICE and DHS at all levels.
Trying to make the story actually about bland journalism criticism is doing their jobs for them. To borrow your framing: your critique is technically accurate, but...
Or if it did, then why this particular assumption? Why not assume that Hamdi was arrested because of his hair style or something?
Because he was arrested in the US?
Right, which is why I called you out for bringing it up. Make your bland criticism of the Guardian in a journalism forum.
If the standard for criticizing clear ICE overreach (and yes, an unexplained detainment is very clear overreach for a department who are statutorily just supposed to be checking visas) becomes "You have to be able to prove that ICE was wrong before saying anything", then that simply makes them the secret police.
It just doesn't seem to be a good faith discussion of the situation, and in particular it makes your position seem decidedly pro-secret-police.
[1] Which amounts, basically, to "Mildly sensationalist mid-tier news outfit used a sensational headline". It's boring.
... I mean it absolutely does. What on earth are you _supposed_ to do? Give the unaccountable secret police the benefit of the doubt?
Exactly. Even if this guy holds beliefs that aren't aligned with those of the US government, so what? That is not a reason to detain or refuse entry to a place that's supposed to embrace freedom of expression and of the press.
This is blatantly anti-democratic (small 'd'), capricious and just one more example of the current administration's attempts to destroy a free and open society.
Yet here you guys (@ajroos, @dlubarov, etc.) arguing about why the US government is abandoning the rule of law and trying to normalize authoritarianism and bad-faith governance. It doesn't matter why. It's wrong and evil on its face.
I refuse to accept these accusations by word-of-mouth. The White House is currently accusing former presidents of "pro-Hamas rhetoric" (which they never expressed).
It would seem to me that "pro-Hamas" is a meaningless cudgel used by the ruling party to justify mistreatment of those who oppose Israel.
https://www.memri.org/reports/british-political-commentator-...
His language is simply anti-Israel.
You cannot quote a single part of the article you listed where he argues in-favor of Hamas, because he does not mention them at all. You are casting aspersions that do not exist, much in the way the White House has to resort to defaming former presidents instead of setting a morally-consistent example.
You're making a bad-faith extrapolation that most people know is desperate. If it was applied universally, you'd be crying foul too.
We can set aside the Hamas connection if you like, but in any case he was glorifying an attack that included deliberate massacres of civilians.
Because if we apply that logic across the board, then the United States and Israel are both objectively complicit in internationally illegal war crimes. Any citizens that promote their legitimacy is trying to undermine global order, obstruct legitimate democracy and prevent criminal justice for organized terrorism.
Both sides have their faults, but I'm not willing to indict Hamdi for the same reason I don't accuse US citizens of being responsible for Abu Ghraib. It's not justice, just pugilism.
That's fine. But we can both agree that bigotry is not evidence of a crime. If we expanded this "I won't believe for a second" logic further, any number of Americans could be arrested for any reason. It's a slippery slope that you are making more slippery by making immaterial correlations. What you assume is not the same as actual rhetoric.
Violence for political aims.
So yes, that necessarily includes when some alphabet soup agency makes a big show of having some mid-tier guy's door kicked in at 6am by a bunch of fed-cops for violating some law that HN loves.
Has anyone thought about their position for 5 seconds? There is NO islamic country with a right to free speech. Zero. Not even countries like Morocco or Turkey have anything remotely like free speech, and they're the most open Islamic countries imaginable. There are dozens of islamic countries with death penalties for criticism of islam or government (and even Morocco and Turkey have prison sentences for that). CAIR is representing these countries' interests in the US, and they are arguing for free speech protection ... in the US. Not in the over 200 countries where muslims use state violence to control speech. In the US. They are making zero efforts to protect free speech anywhere else.
Obviously no sane person can reasonably consider these people to be either engaging in free speech or protecting free speech, can they?
I, too, love taking someones papers and removing them from the country over their speech. I cheer on the army of government agents scanning social media for wrongthink so that we can rid the country of anti-Israel sentiment.
Saying you hate $NATION and that you want it destroyed is definitely saying you don't want to be there and it's probably a good idea not to have you there.
What is being argued is that the government doing this goes against our values as Americans. It's interesting to observe the same side (right-wingers, libertarians) hold water for these actions while they were painting social media bans as censorship and a violation of their First Amendment rights.
Maybe you didn't do that, but your comment certainly reads like a "well, technically their visa can be revoked" argument which is true, but misses the spirit of the First Amendment.
EDIT: there might be legal issues too depending on the reason for revocation but I'm not a legal expert. Most things in our constitution apply to people and not just citizens so someone visiting the US also has free speech rights.
It also depends on the severity of what someone is doing... there's a difference between speech and action. Saying you disagree with the administration, vs taking hostages and seizing part of a school are different things. Saying you would like to see amnesty for those who entered illegally is different than defrauding the govt, flaunting it on social media and trying to ram a car into a federal agent.
> If someone came into my home, told me they hate me, my way of life, want me dead and starts setting fires in my living room
This analogy doesn't hold up because it's your house, of course you have the right to keep whatever company you like. Same for social media companies. You're not the government.
It's called an analogy. As a citizen, this nation IS my home.
"The president shall not cancel anyone's health insurance while they're in an ambulance on the way to hospital". The constitution does not say that either. It doesn't go into that level of detail.
It doesn't even say that when the government issues a permit (a building permit, visa to travel, a driving license, whatever) then the president can't revoke it on a whim.
I think most people would want government to be trustworthy, reliable etc., though. If you get a license to operate a business or permission to return home from a conference, you should be able to rely on having that.
Yet they really care about free speech ... in America. THAT is where the free speech problem is according to them. Am I really the only one having trouble believing that this is a genuine attitude? Oh and they only defend their version of free speech, with limits on "hate speech" (but not Sami Hamdi's kind of hate speech of course), limits on criticism of religion, and limits on criticizing middle eastern governments. You know, THAT kind of free speech. CAIR, in the US, is really arguing for limits on free speech, "against hate speech", against "islamophobia", against criticism of middle eastern governments, you know limits on the very thing free speech was created for (ie. to protect all criticism of religion and governments, especially foreign ones, but all governments, including the US one)
And who do they invite? Sami Hamdi.
Please go read his twitter stream and tell me if you believe people who hire this guy have any problem with hate speech. Oh and maybe it's just one issue, so filter out the Gaza conflict, and ... nope still hate speech, mostly about the UK. Okay, filter out the UK too. He's defending people who went "on a Jew hunt" in the Netherlands ... This guy is not a moderate in any way shape or form.
Here's the link: https://x.com/SALHACHIMI
I'm sure he'll have made 5 new posts by the time this is read and they'll be another 5 posts inciting at the very least more hatred of Israeli. You may hate Trump, but let's be blunt here: this guy is thankfully powerless, but is easily a LOT worse than Trump.
If you take CAIR's attitude at face value, limits on free speech against hate speech, they'd help deport Sami Hamdi. But clearly this kind of hate speech they don't just want to allow, but protect and nurture.
What I mean is, CAIR really make themselves look really bad here. Really, really, really bad.
That's why this shift is so frustrating and disappointing to so many Americans. It would be like if the Vatican became protestant, or the UK suddenly stopped drinking tea.
If another resident is constantly talking shit about all the rest and saying he thinks they should be shot and go fuck themselves and their moms should die etc etc etc but they immediately call the police on me for telling them to fuck off, saying they felt "threatened" and "unsafe" just because I was the most recent one to move in, I'd also probably say "What the fuck?" about the double standard.
It's like having a bunch of frat bros getting rowdy at a party while the host's wife is having a mental breakdown and waving a gun around. Like the frat bro's aren't great and probably wouldn't be getting that rowdy but are they really what's ruining the vibe?
This isn't to say you can't or shouldn't speak out against anything only that when you participate in political activism, especially when accompanying those decrying a hatred or wishing destruction of the nation you are in, there can and often will be negative repercussions.
On the global scale, the U.S. is one of the less restrictive nations on this issue. Many countries will absolutely block you at the border, imprison you for years then deport you.
As to CAIR, there are a lot of groups in the US that I think are antithetical to a free society as a whole. If it were up to me, the communist groups, antifa, neo-nazi orgs, CAIR and several other groups wouldn't exist in the US in the first place. As it stands, we have freedom of speech and that protects speech you don't like... speech you agree with doesn't need protecting. I'm not a free speech absolutist, but far more in favor of the open discussion than not, the light of day is the best disinfectant. This does not include violent acts, terrorism, or the advocation thereof.
So, ah, not freedom of speech, then?