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On April 11, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student and lawful United States permanent resident, can be deported. Not for committing a crime. Not for violating immigration rules. But for his political speech – specifically for helping organise a peaceful Gaza solidarity encampment at his university.

The government’s case against Khalil is hinged on Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a Cold War-era provision that permits the deportation of any noncitizen whose presence is deemed a potential threat to US foreign policy. The evidence the government submitted against him was a two-page memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asserting – without proof – that Khalil’s “beliefs and associations” could “adversely affect U. S. foreign policy interests”. Ironically, the document itself admitted that Khalil’s actions were “otherwise lawful”.

And yet, it was enough. The mere invocation of “foreign policy” or “national security” now operates like a legal incantation, overriding First Amendment protections, due process and even common sense.

Khalil’s case is not an outlier. It is the leading edge of a broader strategy to silence dissent in the US – particularly dissent critical of Israeli policies or sympathetic to Palestinian rights – using various legal tools. This use and abuse of the US legal system sets a dangerous precedent that in the long run will harm American democracy.

Dozens of international students and scholars – many from Muslim-majority countries or racialised communities – have also been subjected to surveillance, detention and deportation, often without any allegations of criminal wrongdoing.

Among them is Badar Khan Suri, a visiting academic at Georgetown University and Indian citizen who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at his home in Virginia and later transferred to Texas. He remains in detention, facing removal based on his family ties. The father of his American wife used to work as an adviser to the Gaza government.

Another example is Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Fulbright scholar and doctoral student at Tufts University who was detained after co-authoring a newspaper opinion piece related to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. A US immigration judge has since denied her release, labelling her a “flight risk and a danger to the community”.

Another recent case is that of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green card holder and Columbia student protest leader who was arrested by ICE agents when he went for his US citizenship interview. He now faces deportation to the occupied West Bank, which he said would be “a death sentence”, given that he has lost family and friends to Israeli military violence.

Then there’s Momodou Taal, a British-Gambian PhD candidate at Cornell University who filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration, arguing that executive orders targeting pro-Palestinian activists violated his First and Fifth Amendment rights. Despite suing preemptively and being legally represented, Taal’s efforts were ultimately undermined by jurisdictional manoeuvring and executive pressure. His emergency injunction was denied by a federal judge on March 27, and days later, he self-deported, saying he no longer trusted the courts to protect him even with a favourable ruling.

There is also Yunseo Chung, a South Korean-born Columbia student and US permanent resident who narrowly avoided deportation thanks to a preemptive federal court injunction. Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian engineering PhD student at the University of Alabama, was quietly detained with no explanation. Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian student at Columbia, fled to Canada after ICE agents visited her apartment. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) later released footage of her departure, labelling her a “terrorist sympathiser”.

In this campaign of political persecution, the Trump administration has largely relied on immigration courts, which are not part of the independent federal judiciary under Article III of the US Constitution.

They are administrative tribunals housed within the executive branch, specifically, the Department of Justice. Their judges are appointed by the attorney general, lack tenure and are subject to political oversight. The procedural protections available in Article III courts – such as full evidentiary hearings, impartial review and constitutional due process – are substantially weakened in immigration courts.

While federal courts may scrutinise whether an arrest or deportation violates constitutional protections – like the First Amendment or equal protection – immigration judges are often empowered to rule based on vague assertions of “foreign policy concerns” or “national security interests” with little to no requirement for concrete evidence. This dual-track legal system allows the government to bypass the constitution while maintaining the appearance of legality.

There have been numerous calls to reform this system from legal scholars, human rights organisations and even former immigration judges. Proposals have included moving immigration courts out of the Department of Justice and into an independent Article I court structure to ensure judicial impartiality.

However, these reforms have consistently failed, largely due to congressional inaction as well as political resistance from successive administrations that have benefitted from the system’s malleability. The executive branch has long viewed immigration courts as a tool of policy enforcement rather than neutral adjudication.

While this crackdown has so far focused on noncitizens with legal status, it could soon extend to naturalised Americans. US law allows the revocation of citizenship in cases of fraud, membership in terrorist organisations and other crimes. In his first term, Trump created a dedicated “Denaturalization Section” within the Department of Justice to pursue citizenship revocations. About 700,000 immigrant files were investigated with the aim of bringing 1,600 cases to court.

Trump has now signalled that he intends to pick up his denaturalisation drive where he left off. If he deploys this legal tool against critical voices, this would mean that even citizenship may no longer offer protection if one’s political views fall out of favour with the government.

As the Department of Justice, DHS and ICE have worked together on the campaign against dissent, they have received public support from nonprofit organisations. Groups like Betar and Canary Mission have taken public credit for identifying international students involved in pro-Palestinian activism and urging their deportation.

Betar claims to have compiled a list of foreigners it labelled as “jihadis” and submitted it to the Trump administration. Canary Mission, meanwhile, launched a project called “Uncovering Foreign Nationals”, which publishes the names and photos of international students it accuses of anti-Semitism or anti-Israel activism – effectively creating a blacklist.

While there is no official confirmation that DHS or ICE have acted directly on these materials, the close timing between these campaigns and government enforcement has raised serious concerns that these politically motivated private groups are shaping federal immigration enforcement without transparency or accountability.

The US portrays itself as a beacon of liberty, a nation governed by the rule of law, where freedom of speech is sacred. But Khalil’s case – and the others like it – paint a starkly different picture. If your residency, citizenship, education or even physical freedom can be revoked for peacefully expressing political views, then speech is no longer a right. It is a conditional privilege.

This is more than a legal overreach. It is a moral crisis for American democracy. When free speech becomes contingent on political loyalty and when private blacklists shape federal enforcement, the foundational values of liberty, pluralism and equality before the law are being dismantled.

What American democracy urgently needs is congressional action to establish judicial independence in immigration courts, stronger First Amendment protections for noncitizens and full transparency around the government’s reliance on private ideological actors. Anything less risks enshrining a two-tiered system of rights and, ultimately, a country where dissent itself is deportable.

This is not just a test of immigration policy. It is a test of democracy – and of the very soul of the nation itself.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed Iran’s nuclear programme with the visiting leader of Oman, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said, the Kremlin has said, as the diplomatic shuttling around the edges of Iran-US nuclear talks continues apace.

Oman has been mediating between Iran and the United States as US President Donald Trump seeks an agreement that would curb Iran’s nuclear programme, which Washington believes is aimed at developing a nuclear weapon – something that Iran denies.

“This topic was touched on … in the context of mediation efforts by Oman,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a briefing at the Kremlin on Tuesday.

Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov also said both sides “discussed the progress of negotiations between Iranian and American representatives”, according to remarks carried by Interfax.

“We will see what the result will be. We maintain close contact with our Iranian colleagues. Where we can, we help,” Ushakov was quoted as saying.

Trump has threatened to bomb Iran unless a deal is reached. Iran has said there can be no deal under threat of bombardment.

Russia signed a strategic partnership treaty with Iran in January and is also trying to improve relations with the Trump administration.

Moscow has a role in nuclear talks with Iran as a signatory to a previous landmark 2015 nuclear deal that Trump abandoned during his first term as US president in 2018 – a move that prompted Iran to breach its terms a year later.

Russia has warned that any US military action against Iran would be illegal.

In televised comments, Putin was shown telling the sultan that Russian energy companies were interested in developing relations with Oman.

Meanwhile, Putin announced plans to stage a summit with the Arab League group of states later this year as Moscow searches for new partners as it continues its three-year offensive on Ukraine.

Slapped with sweeping Western sanctions after sending troops into Ukraine, Russia has turned towards Asian, African and Arab countries for political and economic ties.

“We plan to hold a summit between Russia and Arab countries this year,” Putin told the Omani leader.

“Many of our friends in the Arab world support this idea,” he added, inviting Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said to the summit, without specifying the date and location.

The visit comes days after Putin hosted Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Moscow for talks on Syria and the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip. Doha is a key mediator between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.

The Gulf states are gaining ever-growing diplomatic influence as mediators in negotiations to resolve the world’s most pressing crises, which have claimed thousands of lives, such as the conflict in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

A third round of negotiations between Tehran and Washington is scheduled to take place in Oman on Saturday.

Ahead of the visit, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is set to visit China on April 23 at the invitation of Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday.

The two sides will discuss bilateral relations and international and regional hot-spot issues of common concern, ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a regular press conference.

The visit is believed to have great significance for deepening political mutual trust between the two countries, Guo told reporters.

Araghchi previously visited China, which was a signatory to the since-abandoned 2015 agreement brokered by world powers that both reined in Tehran’s nuclear programme and provided it with substantial financial relief, in December.

As tributes pour in from around the world for Pope Francis, who died aged 88 on Monday, the pontiff is being remembered by many for embracing communities and challenges that the Roman Catholic Church had carefully avoided previously.

However, many of those issues — among them the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, climate change and immigration — also put Francis on a collision course with several world leaders. The pope’s funeral is on Saturday in St Peter’s Square, and many world leaders – including those he locked horns with during his papacy – have said they will attend it.

So which world leaders did the pope disagree with and what were the issues that drove those differences?

Donald Trump

Francis battled with the United States president over the issue of migration for nearly a decade.

During his first presidential campaign in 2016, Donald Trump promised to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the US border with Mexico.

In February 2016 during a trip to Mexico, Francis lamented Trump’s pledge: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges is not Christian. ”

Trump hit back in a statement posted on his Facebook account, saying: “No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith.

“I am proud to be a Christian and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened. ”

Trump added a hypothetical scenario involving the ISIL (ISIS) armed group: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened,” Trump wrote.

Trump ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2020 and won in a third run in 2024 on the campaign promise of carrying out “the largest deportation in American history”.

Referring to Trump’s plan for mass deportations, Francis said a day before Trump’s inauguration in January: “If it is true, it will be a disgrace because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill for the imbalance. It won’t do. This is not the way to solve things. ”

In February, the Vatican released a letter to US bishops from the pope about the deportations, which Trump had begun after taking office on January 20. While acknowledging a country’s right to safeguard itself and keep its communities safe, he remarked: “The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness. ”

After the pontiff’s death, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him! ” Trump also said that he would attend the pope’s funeral with first lady Melania Trump.

Mauricio Macri and Javier Milei

Francis left his hometown, Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, in 2013 after he was elected pope. The pontiff made more than 45 international trips during his papacy, but Argentina was not among the countries he visited. Before becoming the pope, he was archbishop and then cardinal in Buenos Aires.

In the years that followed, he had tense relations with multiple Argentinian leaders.

Mauricio Macri, who was the centre-right president of Argentina from 2015 to 2019, never publicly clashed with the pope, but Francis was widely believed to be a critic of Macri’s austerity programmes and their impact on the poor in Argentina. When Macri visited the pope at the Vatican in February 2016, the photos of their meeting showed an unusually stern Francis, strengthening speculation of differences between them. Neither of them quashed those suggestions.

In June 2016, Macri made a donation of 16,666,000 pesos (about $15,200 at current exchange rates) to the Scholas Occurentes educational foundation backed by Francis.

However, Francis wrote to the Argentinian branch of Scholas Occurentes, asking it to return the donation.

If tensions between Francis and Macri were more subtle, current far-right President Javier Milei has been open in his disdain for the pope.

While Milei was campaigning for the presidency in 2023, he described the pope as “the representation of evil on Earth”. However, Milei’s tone towards the pontiff softened after he came to office in December 2023. In February 2024, the two met at the Vatican. Milei has said he will attend the pope’s funeral.

Milei wrote on X on Monday: “Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his goodness and wisdom was a true honour for me. ”

Jair Bolsonaro

During his papacy, Francis advocated for the protection of the Amazon rainforest, most of which is in Brazil.

Deforestation and wildfires have ravaged the rainforest in recent years, and as Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2023, Jair Bolsonaro implemented policies seen by critics as exacerbating the struggle to save it.

In 2019, the pope urged Amazonian bishops to take bold action to take care of the rainforest. “If everything continues as it was, if we spend our days content that ‘this is the way things have always been done,’ then the gift vanishes, smothered by the ashes of fear and concern for defending the status quo,” he said.

In 2020, the pope published a text on the exploitation of Indigenous people in the Amazon and the damage caused to the forest due to mining and deforestation.

“Pope Francis said yesterday the Amazon is his, the world’s, everyone’s,” Bolsonaro said in response to the text.

“Well, the pope may be Argentinian, but God is Brazilian. ”

Current Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he will attend the pope’s funeral with first lady Janja Lula da Silva.

“With his simplicity, his courage and empathy, Francis brought the topic of climate change to the Vatican,” Lula said after the pope’s death.

Benjamin Netanyahu

The pope repeatedly denounced Israel’s war on Gaza, where more than 51,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed since October 7, 2023.

But his sharpest criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war came in November when the Italian daily La Stampa published excerpts from a new book of his.

“We should investigate carefully to assess whether this fits into the technical definition [of genocide] formulated by international jurists and organisations,” the pope said.

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli described the pope’s comment as a “trivialisation of the term ‘genocide’ – a trivialisation that comes dangerously close to Holocaust denial”.

In December, the pope also called Israel’s bombardment of Gaza cruel.

An Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson responded to the pope’s sentiments, saying it was “particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism – a multifront war that was forced upon it starting on October 7.

“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people. ”

Netanyahu had hosted the pope in 2014, and according to the Israeli government’s website, Francis in November 2023 met with representatives of Israeli captives taken by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups to Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog offered his condolences. “I send my deepest condolences to the Christian world and especially the Christian communities in Israel – the Holy Land – on the loss of their great spiritual father. … I truly hope that his prayers for peace in the Middle East and for the safe return of the hostages will soon be answered. ”

Vladimir Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Francis three times with their last meeting taking place in 2021.

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While the pope never explicitly criticised Putin publicly, he spoke out against the war.

In May 2022, the pope chastised Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, for supporting the war. “Brother, we are not state clerics. We cannot use the language of politics but that of Jesus,” the pontiff said, describing a conversation with Kirill to the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera. The pope said he had warned Kirill against becoming “Putin’s altar boy”.

Putin expressed his “deepest condolences” over the pope’s passing in a letter to Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, camerlengo of the Roman Catholic Church. “Throughout the years of his pontificate, he actively promoted the development of dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, as well as constructive cooperation between Russia and the Holy See,” Putin wrote.

Ukraine’s leaders

Francis also upset Ukraine’s leaders after he said during a February 2024 interview that Kyiv should have “the courage of the white flag” to negotiate an end to the war.

“Our flag is a yellow and blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” Ukraine’s then-foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba wrote in a response on X.

In October after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the pope said: “I appeal for the Ukrainians not to be left to freeze to death. Stop the air strikes against the civilian population, always the most affected. Stop the killing of innocent people. ”

In an X post on Monday, Zelenskyy wrote about the pope: “He knew how to give hope, ease suffering through prayer, and foster unity. He prayed for peace in Ukraine and for Ukrainians. We grieve together with Catholics and all Christians who looked to Pope Francis for spiritual support. ”

Zelenskyy said he will attend the pope’s funeral.

Catholic Church

The pope also criticised his own institution.

In 2022, the pope apologised for the “cultural genocide” of Canada’s Indigenous population during a visit to the country.

From the 1800s to the late 1990s, the Canadian federal government took at least 150,000 children belonging to First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities to residential schools to erase their cultures and languages. Most of these schools were run by the Catholic Church.

“I am sorry. I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities co-operated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools,” Francis said.

However, his refusal to call what the church did “cultural genocide” drew criticism from some First Nations leaders.

What were other contentious moments for the pope?

In November 2017, the pope visited Myanmar and did not explicitly acknowledge the Rohingya community, for which he drew criticism. A month later, during a December visit to Bangladesh, the pope acknowledged the persecuted community, saying: “The presence of God today is also called Rohingya. ”