‘Apartheid Country’: Far-Left Pundit Says All Laws Passed Before 1965 Should Be ‘Presumptively Unconstitutional’

The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal told “The View” co-hosts on Tuesday that all laws passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be deemed “presumptively unconstitutional.”

Mystal claimed that the U.S. was “functionally an apartheid country” before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, a Civil Rights-era law that prohibited racial discrimination at the ballot boxes. The Supreme Court ruled in June 2013 that a part of the law allowing for federal review of proposed election-related changes before they took effect is unconstitutional.

The justice correspondent accused President Donald Trump’s administration of citing so-called racial laws passed before the Civil Rights Movement to justify the arrest of non-citizens who may pose a threat to the U.S.

“One of the premises for [my] book is that every law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be presumptively unconstitutional,” Mystal said. “Right? Because before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, we were functionally an apartheid country. Not everybody who lived here could vote here, so why should I give a [damn] about a law that some old white man passed in the 1920s like the Immigration and Nationality Act. When they passed our fundamental immigration commonality law, Congress said in real time that they needed the law to prevent the ‘mongrelization’ of the white race by the inferior races. And I look at the law and I say ‘I don’t think that’s so good.’ I don’t think we should still be using it but we are still using it today.”

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The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 mostly limited immigration to permit Europeans amid widespread fears about the spread of communism during the Cold War. The Trump administration has cited this law to justify the detention and deportation of anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil, who helped facilitate the riots and encampments of Columbia University in the spring of 2024.

Mystal accused the administration of jailing Khalil “for the crime of existing” and alleged that the U.S. is incapable of treating people “with decency and humanity.”

“I personally don’t think that I can convince people to open their hearts and minds to immigration,” Mystal said. “I understand that in our failing country, treating people with respect and decency and humanity is a controversial position and I cannot change their mind. But we can make sure that we’re not putting people in jail for the crime of existing. That we’re not putting people in jail for the crime of not filling out the form in triplicate in time and submitting it to the right agent. Immigration status offenses should not be criminal offenses, they should be civil offenses.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on March 13 that the law gives the administration the right to revoke a visa from “individuals who are adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the U.S., according to the Associated Press.

Khalil was part of the Columbia University Apartheid Group, a student-led organization demanding that the university divest from Israel. The New York Police Department (NYPD) arrested over 100 protesters who built encampments on the Ivy League university’s campus and seized the campuses’ Hamilton Hall on April 30, with one employee reportedly claiming to be held hostage inside the building.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the U.S. has “zero tolerance” for any foreign visitor who supports terrorist organizations such as Hamas and will face deportation under U.S. law.

Mystal, who has a long history of spewing far-left and race-obsessed rhetoric, told “The View” co-hosts in March 2022 that the U.S. Constitution is “kind of trash.” In May 2022, he further accused the Founders of being “racist, misogynist jerk faces” because they did not recognize abortion as a fundamental right back in the 1780s.