The Trump administration is trying to deport 30-year-old Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder who was arrested by ICE agents over the weekend, for activity that is “contrary” to US foreign policy based on his involvement in protests critical of Israel’s war on Gaza at Columbia University.
A White House official told The Free Press that Khalil’s activity was a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.”
“The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” the official told The Free Press. “He was mobilizing support for Hamas and spreading antisemitism in a way that is contrary to the foreign policy of the US.”
US officials have labeled pro-Palestine protests “antisemitic” even though many Jewish students participated in and helped organize the demonstrations.
The White House official said the basis for targeting Khalil is being used as a blueprint to target other foreign students either on visas or green cards, and more arrests at other schools are expected. “I suspect we’ll have other schools roped into this,” the official said.
At a White House press conference on Tuesday, Press Secretary Karolin Leavitt claimed Secretary of State Marco Rubio has the right to revoke the visa or green card of individuals who “are adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
“Mahmoud Khalil was an individual who was given the privilege of coming to this country to study at one of our nation’s finest universities and colleges,” Leavitt said. “And he took advantage of that opportunity, of that privilege by siding with terrorists.”
Leavitt also claimed that Khalil was involved in distributing “pro-Hamas propaganda fliers” but didn’t offer any evidence to back up the assertion.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) responded to Leavitt’s comments and said the law she appeared to be citing “requires the secretary of state to have ‘reasonable ground to believe’ the person’s ‘presence or activities in the United States . . . would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.'”
FIRE noted that in explaining how Khalil met the standard for deportation under the law, the administration “did not allege Khalil committed a crime” but did “explicitly cite the content of his speech.”
FIRE said that “protesting government policy is protected by the First Amendment, as is rhetorical support for a terrorist group.”
Khalil was born in Syria, has Algerian citizenship, and is of Palestinian descent. He is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant. Khalil was arrested at his Columbia University-owned apartment in New York City over the weekend by ICE agents and was taken to a detention facility in Louisiana.
For now, a federal judge is preventing Khalil from being deported. “To preserve the Court’s jurisdiction pending a ruling on the petition, Petitioner shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court orders otherwise,” Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York said in a court order in response to a petition filed by Khalil.
