Online hate researcher keeps hammering X despite deportation threat

For Ahmed, Preska’s ruling came with high personal stakes. Although the Trump administration has not initiated removal proceedings, Preska’s order allowed it to start that process after only five days. Acting quickly, Ahmed appealed, then asked both Preska and the appeals court to extend a temporary restraining order blocking his detention or deportation. Since she expressed sympathy in her order, it’s not surprising that Preska quickly granted that request, blocking the US from taking any action until the appeals court rules on Ahmed’s request. But now his fate depends on the appeals court agreeing that a federal court should have the “power to prevent the illegal arrest, detention, and transfer of a green card holder based on the Administration’s policy of retaliating against speech criticizing the practices at the major technology companies,” his appeal said. Ahmed told Ars that he remains optimistic that the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will see through the government’s seeming plan to use the policy to “broadly chill protected speech.” “As a plurality of the active judges of the Second Circuit has already held,” the State Department’s cited authorities “do not permit the Executive to arrest, detain, or transfer noncitizens without judicial review,” Ahmed argued. Boasberg apparently agreed. He held in the CITR case that it matters that “the prospect that [a] policy may later contribute to some noncitizen’s removal does not transform a challenge to the policy into the review of an order of removal.” Ahmed noted that the US never opposed the restraining order, even though his research with CCDH has continued. Last week when the US started more aggressively defending the policy, CCDH contributed research to a major New York Times investigation. In that report, spot checks showed that some of the “most egregious examples” of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) continue to go undetected on Elon Musk’s social media platform X. CCDH “gave access to more than four million links to Grok-generated images compiled for researchers” at the Canadian Center for Children Protection for that review, the NYT reported. In total, 65 AI-generated CSAM images were found, as well as 75 known CSAM images. Some images were viewed hundreds of times. (Asked for comment, X linked to an X Safety post saying, “X has zero tolerance for CSAM.) Although Ahmed disclaimed seeking that relief and sought other relief, including vacating the policy and declaring the government’s actions unconstitutional, his “single most important reason for filing this case is to be able to remain here with his wife and daughters,” Preska wrote. To her, it seemed the relief he sought was “inextricably linked” to “any potential removal order he might face because it is ‘a necessary prerequisite’ to stop his deportation.” Preska was further bound to deny Ahmed’s petition because of a recent ruling that found the government’s authority over removal proceedings can extend to “questions of law and fact” arising in challenges to removal, “not just removal orders,” she wrote. But that recent ruling is currently being challenged, Ahmed’s appeal noted. “The full Court took the unusual step of granting rehearing en banc before a petition for rehearing was filed,” due to the belief by six judges that federal courts do “have jurisdiction to provide relief in these circumstances,” his appeal said. “That history strongly suggests that the Court will soon hold that federal courts possess jurisdiction,” Ahmed argued. “At the very least, it raises a strong showing” that he “will prevail on the merits with respect to jurisdiction.” He also argued that courts have distinguished claims of retaliatory detention as independent of claims tied to removal proceedings. To keep his fight alive, Ahmed reiterated to the appeals court that he does not want an injunction that “would prevent the Government from commencing removal proceedings against him.” Instead, he wants to resolve his challenges regarding the “government’s use of arrest and detention to punish protected speech,” which he argued “can be resolved without reviewing a removal order or preventing an immigration court from adjudicating his removability.” That’s necessary to prevent widespread harms across the content-moderation sector, he alleged. “It would be deeply concerning if people could be detained at the whim of any government official,” Ahmed told Ars.