Suri, meanwhile, is accused of spreading pro-Hamas materials and of having “close connections” to a “suspected terrorist” because his wife’s father has been identified as an adviser to Hamas leadership. But the father says he left that role a decade ago, and regardless, this is naked guilt by association.
Suri’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, tells me Rubio’s office has not supplied its written determination explaining the decision or evidence backing up the assertions behind it. “They’ve given us nothing,” Ahmad told me. “Not a shred of evidence.”
Rubio owns all this. As immigration lawyer David Leopold notes, the legislative history of the provision Rubio is invoking clearly demonstrates that Congress intended it to be used “sparingly,” and not primarily to punish political viewpoints. Yet the White House says more deportations on these grounds are coming, a clear violation of those notions. By all indications Rubio will keep invoking this statute to carry that out.
Let’s stress that even if we ultimately learn bad things about these defendants, this already constitutes a serious affront to the rule of law. Here Rubio is a fully complicit agent in Trump’s escalating assaults on it.
Decimating USAID. Elon Musk has been rightly described as the driver of the destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development. But the central role played by Rubio—and the sheer deceitfulness and moral cowardice of his involvement—remains underappreciated.