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The arrest of a Palestinian activist who helped organize campus protests of the war in Gaza has sparked questions about whether foreign students and green card holders are protected against being deported from the U.S. Mahmoud Khalil was arrested Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Homeland Security officials and President Donald Trump have indicated that the arrest was directly tied to his role in the protests last spring at Columbia University in New York City. Khalil is being held at an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana, while he awaits immigration court proceedings that could eventually lead to him being deported. His arrest has drawn criticism that he’s being unfairly and unlawfully targeted for his activism while the federal government has essentially described him as a terrorist sympathizer. A look at what kind of protections foreign students and green card holders have and what might be next for Khalil: Can someone with a green card be deported? A green card holder is someone who has lawful permanent residence status in the United States. Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer is a law professor at Cornell Law School who teaches immigration law. She said lawful permanent residents generally have many protections and “should be the most protected short of a US citizen. But that protection isn’t absolute. Green card holders can still be deported for committing certain crimes, failing to notify immigration officials of a change in address or engaging in marriage fraud, for example. The Department of Homeland Security said Khalil was taken into custody as a result of Trumps executive orders prohibiting antisemitism. Trump has argued that protesters forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls Gaza and has been designated as a terrorist organization. Khalil and other student leaders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest have rejected claims of antisemitism, saying they are part of a broader anti-war movement that also includes Jewish students and groups. But the protest coalition, at times, has also voiced support for leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Islamist organization designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group. Experts say that officials seem to indicate with their rhetoric that they are trying to deport Khalil on the grounds that he’s engaging in some sort of terrorist activity or somehow poses a threat. Khalil has not been convicted of any terrorist-related activity. In fact, he has not been charged with any wrongdoing. But experts say the federal government has fairly broad authority to arrest and try to deport a green card holder on terrorism grounds. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, green card holders do not need to be convicted of something to be removable,” Kelley-Widmer said. They could be deported if the secretary of homeland security or the attorney general have reasonable grounds to believe they engaged in, or are likely to engage in, terrorist activities, she said. But Kelley-Widmer said she’s never seen a case where the alleged terrorist activity happened in the U.S., and she questioned whether taking part in protests as Khalil did qualifies. What did ICE say about why they were arresting him? One of the key issues in Khalil’s case is what ICE agents said to his lawyer at the time he was arrested. His lawyer, Amy Greer, said the agents who took him into custody at his university-owned home near Columbia initially claimed to be acting on a State Department order to revoke his student visa. But when Greer informed them that Khalil was a permanent resident with a green card, they said they would revoke that documentation instead. Kelley-Widmer said that exchange raises questions about how familiar the agents who arrested him were with the law or whether there was a “real disregard for the rule of law. I think we should be really concerned that this is happening, she said. What are the next steps in his case? Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a message posted Sunday on X that the administration will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported. If someone is in the country on a student visa, the State Department does have authority to revoke it if the person violates certain conditions. For example, said Florida immigration attorney John Gihon, it’s quite common for the State Department to cancel visas of foreign students who get arrested for drunk driving. But when it comes to someone who’s a lawful permanent resident, that generally requires an immigration judge to determine whether they can be deported. Gihon said the next step is that Khalil would receive charging documents explaining why he’s being detained and why the government wants to remove him, as well as a notice to appear in immigration court. Generally, he should receive those within 72 hours of being arrested, and then he would make an initial appearance before an immigration judge. That could take from 10 days to a month, Gihon said. But he cautioned that right now he’s seeing extensive delays across the immigration court system, with clients often moved around the country to different facilities. We are having people who are detained and then theyre bounced around to multiple different detention facilities. And then sometimes theyre transferred across the country, he said. Khalil’s lawyers have also filed a lawsuit challenging his detention. A federal judge in New York City ordered that Khalil not be deported while the court considered his case. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. Rebecca Santana, Associated Press
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A jury on Monday quickly and completely rejected a man’s claim that Disney’s Moana was stolen from his story of a young surfer in Hawaii.The Los Angeles federal jury deliberated for only about 2 hours before deciding that the creators of Moana never had access to writer and animator Buck Woodall’s outlines and script for Bucky the Surfer Boy.With that question settled, the jury of six women and two men didn’t even have to consider the similarities between Bucky and Disney’s 2016 hit animated film about a questing Polynesian princess.Woodall had shared his work with a distant relative, who worked for a different company on the Disney lot, but the woman testified during the two-week trial that she never showed it to anyone at Disney.“Obviously we’re disappointed,” Woodall’s attorney Gustavo Lage said outside court. “We’re going to review our options and think about the best path forward.”In closing arguments earlier Monday, Woodall’s attorney said that a long chain of circumstantial evidence showed the two works were inseparable.“There was no Moana without Bucky,” Lage said.Defense lawyer Moez Kaba said that the evidence showed overwhelmingly that Moana was clearly the creation and “crowning achievement” of the 40-year career of John Musker and Ron Clements, the writers and directors behind 1989’s The Little Mermaid, 1992’s Aladdin, 1997’s Hercules, and 2009’s The Princess and the Frog.“They had no idea about Bucky,” Kaba said in his closing. “They had never seen it, never heard of it.”Moana earned nearly $700 million at the global box office.A judge previously ruled that Woodall’s 2020 lawsuit came too late for him to claim a piece of those receipts, and that a lawsuit he filed earlier this year over Moana 2which earned more than $1 billionmust be decided separately. That suit remains active, though the jury’s decision does not bode well for it. Judge Consuelo B. Marshall, who is also overseeing the sequel lawsuit, said after the verdict that she agreed with the jurors’ decision about access.“We are incredibly proud of the collective work that went into the making of Moana and are pleased that the jury found it had nothing to do with Plaintiff’s works,” Disney said in a statement.Musker and Disney’s attorneys declined to comment outside the courtroom.The relatively young jury of six women and two men watched Moana in its entirety in the courtroom. They considered a story outline that Woodall created for Bucky in 2003, along with a 2008 update and a 2011 script.In the latter versions of the story, the title character, vacationing in Hawaii with his parents, befriends a group of Native Hawaiian youth and goes on a quest that includes time travel to the ancient islands and interactions with demigods to save a sacred site from a developer.Around 2004, Woodall gave the Bucky outline to the stepsister of his brother’s wife. That woman, Jenny Marchick, worked for Mandeville Films, a company that had a contract with Disney and was located on the Disney lot. He sent her follow-up materials through the years. He testified that he was stunned when he saw Moana in 2016 and saw so many of his ideas.Along with her testimony saying she didn’t show Bucky to anyone, messages shared by the defense showed she eventually ignored Woodall’s queries to her and had told him there was nothing she could do for him.Disney attorney Kaba argued there was no evidence Marchick ever worked on Moana or received any credit or compensation for it.Kaba pointed out that Marchick, now head of features development at DreamWorks Animation, worked for key Disney competitors Sony and Fox during much of the time she was allegedly making use of Woodall’s work for Disney.Woodall also submitted the script directly to Disney and had a meeting with an assistant at the Disney Channel, which Marchick arranged for him, to talk about working as an animator. But jurors agreed that this didn’t give them reason to believe that Bucky made its way to Musker, Clements or their collaborators.Lage, Woodall’s attorney, outlined some of the similarities of the two works in his closing.Both include teens on oceanic quests.Both have Polynesian demigods as central figures and shape-shifting characters who turn into, among other things, insects, and sharks.In both, the main characters interact with animals who act as spirit helpers.Kaba said many of these elements, including Polynesian lore and basic “staples of literature,” are not copyrightable.Shape-shifting among supernatural characters, he said, appears throughout films including The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Hercules, which made Musker and Clements essential to the Disney renaissance of the 1990s and made Disney a global powerhouse.Animal guides go back to movies as early as 1940’s Pinocchio and appear in all of Musker and Clements’ previous films, he said.Kaba said Musker and Clements developed Moana the same way they did the other films, through their own inspiration, research, travel and creativity.The lawyer said thousands of pages of development documents showed every step of Musker and Clements’ creation, whose spark came from the paintings of Paul Gaugin and the writings of Herman Melville“You can see every single fingerprint,” Kaba said. “You can see the entire genetic makeup of Moana.” Andrew Dalton, AP Entertainment Writer
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Old 401(k)s are a little like the old clothes in the back of your closet. You know you should do something about them, but there they sit, mostly out of sight and mind.And so it is with your old 401(k). If deciding what to do with an old (k) plan has been on your to-do list for a while, here are the key steps you should take to get it done. Step 1: Check your account value. If your balance in your former employer’s 401(k) plan is over $7,000, you can leave the money behind in the old plan or roll the assets into an IRA or your new employer’s 401(k).But if your balance falls below that $7,000 threshold, some of the decision-making may be out of your hands. Step 2: Determine whether to stay within the 401(k) confines. Assuming your balance is over $7,000, your next task is to decide whether to roll the money into an IRA or keep it inside a 401(k).I often recommend rolling over the assets from a former 401(k) into a no-fee IRA with a top-notch mutual fund company or discount broker. But some people value the extra creditor protections that can accompany 401(k) assets versus IRA assets, while others may prize 401(k)-specific investment options. Step 3: Assess the quality of your 401(k) options. If you think you will be better off leaving your money inside a 401(k) rather than rolling it over to an IRA, the next job is to conduct some research on your own 401(k) options.Even if you do decide to stay with a 401(k), you may need to decide whether you’re better off staying put in your former employer’s plan or that of your new employer. Step 4: Find the right IRA provider. If a rollover to an IRA is the way to go, the next step is to identify the right brokerage firm or mutual fund company. Look for a firm that offers a breadth of high-quality investment options with no additional layers of fees for IRA investors. Target-date funds are an elegant, low-maintenance, and underutilized option. Step 5: Decide whether to convert your traditional 401(k) assets to Roth. If you decide to roll Roth 401(k) contributions to an IRA or your current employer’s 401(k), your new account will be Roth, too, meaning that you won’t owe tax on qualified withdrawals.If you have traditional 401(k) assets, a rollover is also a good time to consider whether to convert those assets to a Roth account at the same time. Step 6: Execute. If you’ve decided to roll over your assets to an IRA, fill out the paperwork or online form to open the IRA. You’ll then request a direct rollover from your 401(k) plan to the new IRA provider.The process may be a bit more cumbersome if you’re rolling over to your current employer’s 401(k).In both cases, make sure your 401(k) provider makes the check payable to the provider and sends it directly to them, rather than to you. If the check is made out to you, 20% of the balance will be withheld for income tax. You’ll then have 60 days to get that money deposited into an IRA or another 401(k); if that deadline comes and goes, the distribution will count as a withdrawal and you’ll owe ordinary income tax and a 10% early withdrawal penalty if you’re not 55 or older. Step 7: Determine what to invest in. If you’ve decided to roll over your assets from an old 401(k) to another 401(k) or IRA, you’ll also have to determine how you’ll allocate those assets.If all of your retirement assets were in your old 401(k), a sturdy target-date fund is a one-stop, low-maintenance choice that you can hold into retirement. If your old 401(k) is just one of several accounts geared toward retirement, a rollover can be an ideal time to check up on how all the pieces fit togetherand where you have holes. This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance Christine Benz of Morningstar
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