\n<\/p>\n
As part of<\/span> the Trump administration\u2019s drive to lionize the late Charlie Kirk and chill criticism of his politics, the State Department announced on Tuesday that it had revoked visas for a half-dozen noncitizens who had \u201ccelebrated\u201d his assassination in recent weeks online.<\/p>\n The State Department shared the offending remarks in a thread on X, redacting the posters\u2019 handles and avatars. Many of the comments were crass and incendiary \u2014 the kind of protected political speech at the heart of the First Amendment, which applies to citizens and noncitizens alike. One Argentine suggested that Kirk should \u201crest in fucking piss\u201d because of his life devoted to \u201cspreading racist, xenophobic, misogynistic rhetoric,\u201d while a Brazilian national asserted that Kirk \u201cDIED TOO LATE.\u201d<\/p>\n Nota Baloyi, a South African who spoke to The Intercept on Wednesday, had his visa revoked for tweeting that Kirk \u201cwon\u2019t be remembered as a hero. He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash!\u201d<\/p>\n Baloyi told The Intercept that he deleted his post from X after South African right-wingers flagged it for the State Department by tagging Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who tweeted<\/a> in the days after Kirk\u2019s death that visa revocations were \u201cunder way\u201d and that noncitizens who were \u201ccheering on the public assassination of a political figure\u201d should \u201cprepare to be deported.\u201d Baloyi disputed that his post was mocking or making light of Kirk\u2019s death.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the government can revoke visas for many reasons, the First Amendment forbids it from doing so based on viewpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cI was keeping this matter to myself until the State Department posted about it,\u201d said Baloyi, who is currently in South Africa and last visited the U.S. in 2023.<\/p>\n Last Friday he received a brief email notification from the U.S. consular office revoking his visa. The message made no reference to his social media activity. <\/p>\n \u201cI thought immediately, \u2018what could I have done?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n He realized what was happening after the State Department shared his post on Tuesday. \u201cI was being targeted because I\u2019m an enemy of right-wing South Africans,\u201d Baloyi said, \u201cespecially those who have been going around the world and pleading to the Trump administration to let them in as refugees<\/a> and victims of a nonexistent white genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n Baloyi\u2019s remarks and others flagged by the State Department are all examples of core political speech, according to attorneys who slammed the revocations as blatantly unconstitutional.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a profound threat to free expression,\u201d wrote Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union\u2019s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, in a statement to The Intercept. \u201cThe government is weaponizing immigration law to punish people for expressing disapproved opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese kinds of visa revocations are censorship, plain and simple,\u201d wrote Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney and legislative adviser at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.<\/p>\n \u201cMere \u2018mockery\u2019 can\u2019t be grounds for adverse government action \u2014 whether revocation of broadcast licenses or revocation of visas,\u201d DeCell added. \u201cWhile the government can revoke visas for many reasons, the First Amendment forbids it from doing so based on viewpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month, in a lawsuit brought by the Knight Institute on behalf of professors and academics nationwide, a federal judge ruled<\/a> that Rubio and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had unconstitutionally targeted noncitizens for deportation and detention based on political speech, namely criticism of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cSecretaries Noem and Rubio are engaged in a mode of enforcement leading to detaining, deporting, and revoking noncitizens\u2019 visas solely on the basis of political speech, and with the intent of chilling such speech and that of others similarly situated,\u201d wrote<\/a> Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee to the federal court in Massachusetts, in his ruling. \u201cSuch conduct is not only unconstitutional, but a thing virtually unknown to our constitutional tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n In the email notification to Baloyi, who shared a copy with The Intercept, the State Department invoked the same broad law the Trump administration used to target R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk<\/a> and other college students for deportation earlier this spring: section 221(i)<\/a> of the Immigration and Nationality Act.<\/p>\n That provision, which is currently being challenged by student journalists<\/a> as unconstitutional to the extent it\u2019s used to target noncitizens based on their speech, grants the secretary of state broad authority to revoke visas \u201cat any time, in his discretion.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n