Democrats and anti-Israel activists are claiming the attempted deportation of an alleged Hamas sympathizer to be unconstitutional, but immigration experts point out that the State Department has broad authority to remove foreign nationals deemed a foreign policy threat.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on March 8 arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Algerian national who became the face of the anti-Israel protests in Columbia University throughout 2024. Khalil’s arrest and the Trump administration’s efforts to see him deported have drawn incredible backlash from his lawyers, activists and a growing cohort of Democratic lawmakers, many of whom are arguing that the actions are an infringement on his free speech rights.
“This is definitely not a free speech issue,” Matt O’Brien, investigations director for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, said to the Daily Caller News Foundation. O’Brien, who previously served as an immigration judge, pointed to a section in U.S. code that states, “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.”
O’Brien specifically pointed to Ruiz-Massieu, a 1999 case before the Board of Immigration Appeals which held that a letter from the Secretary of State conveying a determination that a non-citizen’s presence in the U.S. to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” is sufficient enough for deportation.
“Hamas is a [Department of State] designated terrorist organization, so Rubio’s stated reasons for invoking 1227 [an immigration statute] fall squarely within the holding in Ruiz-Massieu,” O’Brien continued.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that the case has nothing to do with free speech, but about foreign individuals who do not have a right to be in the United States. No one has a right to a student visa, nor does anyone have a right to a green card, Rubio stated.
“So when you apply for a student visa or any visa to enter the United States, we have a right to deny you for virtually any reason, but I think being a supporter of Hamas and coming into our universities and turning them upside down and being complicit in what are clearly crimes of vandalization, complicit in shutting down learning institutions – there are kids at these schools that can’t go to class,” the secretary of state said.
“If you told us that’s what you intended to do when you came to America, we would have never let you in,” he continued.
Amid the Israel-Hamas war, major universities across the United States became overrun with leftist student protesters sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Largely at the center of these student protests was Columbia University in New York City, which experienced protesters so violent that university officials were forced to call the New York Police Department to make arrests.
Throughout 2024, anti-Israel protesters at Columbia unlawfully occupied campus property and became so aggressive that the school was eventually forced to cancel in-person classes and even cancel its university-wide commencement ceremony. Khalil — a graduate student living in the country on a non-immigrant student visa at the time — positioned himself early on as a leader of the Columbia protests, speaking to media outlets and serving as an intermediary between the school and the demands of the campus activists.
Then-candidate Donald Trump expressed very little sympathy for school protesters engaging in unlawful behavior, declaring in May 2024 that he would crush the protest movement and deport foreign students involved in illegal activity if elected as president.
Following through on that pledge, ICE agents approached Khalil on the night of March 8 at his university-owned apartment and made an arrest, according to court documents. An agent informed Khalil’s attorney over the phone that he had an administrative warrant for his arrest, and the State Department was revoking his student visa and green card. Khalil entered the U.S on a student visa in 2022, and later married an American citizen and obtained legal permanent status, court documents confirm.
A review of the ICE detainee database confirms Khalil remains in the agency’s custody at the La Salle detention center in Louisiana.
A subsequent statement by the Department of Homeland Security said the arrest was in support of Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism and claimed that “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
The backlash against the arrest has been widespread and ongoing. Protesters quickly gathered en masse in New York City in support of Khalil after his arrest, demanding he be let out of ICE custody. Protests continued into Thursday, with activists storming Trump Tower and, again, demanding the alleged Hamas supporter be released back into the community.
Fourteen House Democrats on Tuesday wrote a letter demanding the Trump administration release him immediately. The signers included Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was censured by colleagues for her remarks on the Hamas conflict, and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was previously removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for alleged anti-Semitic rhetoric.
“You can disagree with his views or his politics, but there is no evidence he has broken any law,” Democrat Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said in a public statement. “Because once it becomes normal for the regime to disappear people simply for protesting against the regime’s policies, once a citizen or a resident of America can be locked away with no charges against them simply because they protested, there is no going back for America.”
However, immigration experts say Khalil’s detention is nothing remotely pertaining to his right to free speech — and the U.S. government is acting within its authority to deport non-citizens, even if they haven’t committed any crimes.
Lora Ries, the border security and immigration director at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF that no criminal charge is required for Khalil’s removal.
“The U.S. Government has both an immigration option and/or a criminal one. So far, he’s been arrested and charged in the immigration context,” Ries explained. “It does not matter if he hasn’t been charged with a crime to pursue his immigration removal; a criminal charge is not a requirement.”
“Temporary visa holders can have their visa revoked if they are found inadmissible and permanent visa holders (green cards) can lose their green cards and be removed if they violate a ground of removability,” Ries continued. “The U.S. Government hasn’t charged terrorism-related grounds of deportability or sought to have a green card revoked for too long. And it shows.”
Born in Syria in 1999 to a Palestinian family, Khalil earned his undergraduate degree in Beirut, Lebanon and later enrolled at Columbia, where he earned a graduate degree at the School of International and Public Affairs last December, according to the New York Post. Columbia suspended him last April for his role in the demonstrations, but that suspension was reversed almost immediately, according to statements he made to the media at the time.
Khalil reportedly worked as a political affairs officer with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which was stripped of millions in funding from the U.S. and allied nations after a report uncovered agency staffers took part in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and had ties to other Islamic terrorist organizations.
It’s not immediately clear how Khalil — a man born in Syria with Palestinian roots — obtained Algerian citizenship. The Algerian embassies in New York City and Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment or answer if the Algerian government is willing to take Khalil back, should he be deported from the U.S.
Organizations that monitor anti-Semitism have voiced strong support for Kahlil’s ICE detainment, arguing that his activities at Columbia crossed a line. In a statement to the DCNF, Betar US noted that Khalil was a leader of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), an organization Betar described as “virulently anti-Israel” and “openly pro Hamas” that discriminates against Jewish students by barring them from campus laws and posting anti-Semitic material.
Daniel Levy, a Betar spokesperson, told the DCNF that his organization provided to the Trump administration a dossier of alleged pro-terrorist foreign students to be considered for deportation — with Khalil’s name included. The group says it will continue to update Trump officials with details on alleged pro-terrorist activity from university students.
The Canary Project, another group that tracks anti-Semitic activity, features an extensive list of allegedly extremist activity by Khalil since the Columbia protests began. The group flagged one instance when Khalil was speaking, reportedly as a representative for CUAD, and appeared to justify Hamas terrorism by saying, “We’ve tried armed resistance, which is legitimate under international law, but Israel calls it terrorism.”
The White House has also argued that his activity warranted removal from the U.S. While speaking to the press, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Khalil not only organized protests that harassed Jewish American students, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, including flyers with the Hamas logo.
It’s not clear yet if Khalil will be deported from the U.S. A federal judge temporarily blocked his deportation until the merits of the case are played out in court. In a Truth Social post, Trump called Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” and said his arrest was the first of many to come.
For many activists opposed to anti-Semitism, the apprehensions cannot come any sooner.
“America and these deportations in many ways are tests for the future of the republic,” Levy stated to the DCNF. “While it’s great one person was arrested, what’s the delay on thousands being arrested?”
“Will America simply permit Middle East foreigners come to destroy this nation?” he asked.
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