Mahmoud Khalil is a law-abiding permanent resident of the US, but the Trump administration is prosecuting him for his political opinions using a law that was originally aimed at Communists.

The news, broken today by the Washington Post, transforms what was until now a story about free speech and advocacy for Palestine into a much broader episode of class struggle.

In their efforts to deport Khalil, the Trump administration has appealed to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Enacted in 1952, the bill restricted immigration based on race and nationality quotas — but it also contained three crucial provisions:

• Section 212(a)(3)(d) declared inadmissible and ineligible for visas “any immigrant who is or has been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party”;

• Section 241(a)(6)(C) declared eligible for deportation any aliens who “are members of or affiliated with . . . the Communist or any other totalitarian party of any State of the United States, [or] of any foreign state” or “who write or publish, or cause to be written or published, or knowingly circulate . . . the economic, international, and governmental doctrines of world communism”; and
• Section 313(a)(2) prohibited naturalizing as a citizen of the US anyone who “is a member of or affiliated with . . . the Communist or any other totalitarian party of any State of the United States, [or] of any foreign state.”

Though liberal advocates of immigration reform fought against the bill’s passage, their concern was mostly with its quota system. In a struggle with more than a passing resemblance to fights over immigration today, liberals wanted a more open policy while the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Patrick McCarran, was worried about the effect that “undesirables” would have on the country. Ironically, given the accusations of antisemitism leveled at Khalil, McCarran was himself significantly driven by anxiety about supposed “Jewish interests” in his efforts to pass the INA.

Liberals were not, in any case, particularly concerned about the anti-communist provisions. That failure of solidarity would prove to be their undoing. As historian Maddalena Marinari documents in Divided and Conquered, McCarran attacked the rival Lehman-Humphrey bill

on “a certain radical group, which for many years, has been dedicated to the destruction of our protective immigration system.” At the height of the anti-Communist hysteria, calling someone radical had serious implications. . . .

Shortly thereafter, she writes, supporters of McCarran accused his opponents of

supporting an immigration agenda that could destroy America’s “protective immigration system, weaken the procedures designed to exclude and deport Communists and other subversives, and overrun the United States with a flood of aliens.”

McCarran, meanwhile, launched a media campaign where he “insisted that any objection to his law was Communist-inspired.” Though Jewish and Italian groups pushed back against the bill’s anti-communist provisions in particular and various Christian groups stood firm against its immigration restrictions, the liberal coalition eventually shattered in the face of right-wing red-baiting. One fracture in the coalition was particular telling: Bruce Mohler, head of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, argued that if then president Harry Truman vetoed the bill because it was “not sufficiently liberal, he would, in effect . . . in the name of liberalism, really defeat a first step towards a more liberal immigration policy.”

Once again, the forces of reaction found a powerful ally among Democrats in anti-communism and “anti-purity” incrementalism. Had they taken a basic stand for bedrock liberal ideals of tolerance and pluralism, the liberal coalition might have stopped McCarran. Instead, they chose to abet one of the most dangerous and racist pieces of legislation in the twentieth century.

Democrats may well get a second shot at this. In mid-2023, Donald Trump pledged to use the same act to “to deny entry to all communists and all Marxists. . . . We’re going to keep foreign, Christian-hating communists, Marxists, and socialists out of America.” Even more troubling, the Associated Press reports that Trump also called for a new law “to address communists and Marxists who grew up in America.”

Only six years ago, an overwhelming majority of Democrats stood and applauded when Trump declared that America “will never be a socialist country.” Liberals may hope that he’s right, but if the history of the Immigration and Nationality Act is any guide, they should remember that they may be next on the right’s list of undesirables. When first they come for the communists, they rarely stop at communists.