The federal government is accusing a detained Columbia University student of not being completely forthcoming on his United States visa application.
Mahmoud Khalil did not disclose that he previously worked as a political affairs officer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in his application for legal permanent residency, according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors. The notorious UN agency, which has long been accused of ties to Hamas, allegedly employed numerous individuals that took part in the Oct. 7 massacre that left roughly 1,200 people dead.
Prosecutors say he not only failed to mentioned his past employment as a UNRWA political affairs officer in his green card application, but also did not disclose his past role as a programs manager for the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, or his affiliation with the anti-Israel student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
“Regardless of his allegations concerning political speech, Khalil withheld membership in certain organizations and failed to disclose continuing employment by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut when he submitted his adjustment of status application,” the administration’s lawyers wrote in a court brief dated Sunday. “It is black-letter law that misrepresentations in this context are not protected speech.”
“Thus, Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring, and there is an independent basis to justify removal sufficient to foreclose Khalil’s constitutional claim here,” prosecutors continued.
The Trump administration is attempting to deport Khalil, a leader of the anti-Israel protests that swept Columbia University, arguing that he spearheaded activities aligned to Hamas.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on March 8 arrested Khalil, a Syrian-born Algerian national who became the face of the anti-Israel protests in Columbia throughout 2024. A subsequent statement by the Department of Homeland Security said the arrest was in support of President Donald Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism and claimed that “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
While Khalil’s lawyers argue he is being targeted for his anti-Israel activism and his arrest is an infringement on his free speech rights, immigration experts have noted that the case has nothing at all to do with free speech. The State Department says it has the authority to remove non-citizens deemed a foreign policy threat.
“An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable,” Matt O’Brien, investigations director for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, previously said to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In addition to allegedly being a foreign policy threat, the Trump administration is now arguing Khalil’s green card application was riddled with omissions, which can be a deportable offense under immigration law. The UNRWA, a UN agency tasked with providing services to Palestinians, is accused of being deeply embedded with Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations.
More than one thousand UNRWA staff members, accounting for about 10% of the agency’s total staff, reportedly have links to Islamic terrorist organizations. That report followed UNRWA’s decision to fire several of its employees for allegedly participating in the Hamas Oct. 7 massacre, which killed roughly 1,200 people, many of them young adults at a music festival.
The agency has since been beleaguered with financial issues after the U.S. and other Western countries withdrew funding amid the allegations of Hamas ties.
Khalil’s detention is part of the Trump administration’s overall crackdown on foreign student protesters who allegedly participated in pro-Hamas activities or otherwise accused of having extremist ties.
ICE agents arrested Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from the West Bank, earlier in March after her student visa expired and was previously arrested for her alleged participation in pro-Hamas activity at Columbia University. Deportation officers also recently arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national who worked as a researcher at Georgetown University campus, whom DHS accuses of spreading Hamas propaganda, promoting anti-Semitism and having close ties to a senior adviser to Hamas.
Immigration authorities also denied entry and deported Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese national, after Customs and Border Protection discovered she was returning from a funeral for former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and allegedly had numerous adoring pictures of other extremists on her cell phone. An additional foreign student protester, Indian national Ranjani Srinivasan, chose to voluntarily leave using Trump’s new self-deportation app after her visa was revoked for alleged pro-Hamas activities.
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