It is appropriate for the government to expel non-Americans who are pro-Hamas, antisemitic agitators.
It is appropriate for the government to expel non-Americans who are pro-Hamas, antisemitic agitators.
A n immigration judge ruled on Friday that the Trump administration may deport Mahmoud Khalil, the legal alien who became a fixture in the pro-Hamas campus agitation at Columbia University. This is just the first step in the removal process, though an important one. There will now be an appeal in the immigration tribunal, and challenges in the judicial courts.
As we’ve anticipated, the Trump administration is acting at the outer rim of its constitutional and statutory authority in seeking to expel legal aliens from the United States over what, if engaged in by Americans, would be constitutionally protected speech and association. That is apparent from a submission made to an immigration court by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on the basis of which Khalil was held removable.
It is permissible for the government to remove a legal alien on this basis — provided the secretary has reasonable grounds to believe the alien’s continued presence would be detrimental to American foreign policy interests. It is also, in my view, appropriate for the government to expel such aliens. At least initially, it may even be broadly popular.
We shouldn’t kid ourselves, though: It is controversial, and it will understandably disturb the worthy libertarian sensibilities of most Americans. This is why I’ve argued that the administration must go about it carefully, with manifest regard for constitutional safeguards. Alas, that is not the way the Trump administration rolls.
Mahmoud Khalil is a lawful permanent resident (LPR) alien who was among the most prominent of the student agitators in the antisemitic, pro-Hamas mayhem that swept across Columbia, as it did across many American university campuses, in the months after October 7, 2023. In the barbarities of that day, hundreds of Jews in Israel (including dozens of American citizens) were killed, maimed, raped, and taken hostage.
Khalil was born in 1995, reportedly to Palestinian parents living in Syria, and he has Algerian citizenship. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the American University in Beirut and is said to have worked for a time at the British embassy in Lebanon. As NR’s Haley Strack has reported, Khalil also worked as a public affairs officer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. UNRWA has functioned as a de facto arm of Hamas (a designated terrorist organization, which rules Gaza, where UNRWA operates and employs hundreds of locals); a number of UNRWA officials have been implicated in the October 7 attacks. NR’s David Zimmermann has reported that, according to the Justice Department, Khalil improperly omitted his UNRWA work history from his green card application; if so, that could be a separate basis to revoke his lawful permanent resident alien immigration status and deport him.
Khalil lawfully entered the United States in 2022 on a student visa to study at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Subsequently, he married Noor Abdalla, a United States citizen and dentist who is due to give birth to the couple’s first child sometime this month. The marriage to an American enabled Khalil to seek an upward adjustment of his immigration status; he was granted LPR status and issued a green card. LPRs are considered “U.S. persons” for various purposes under federal law, but they remain aliens — they are not citizens and do not enjoy all the rights and protections of citizens. Khalil was awarded a master’s degree in December 2024. He was still living with Abdalla in Columbia-owned housing, and participating in the campus unrest, when immigration agents arrested him on March 8.
Khalil had become prominent in the campus uprisings that followed the October 7 barbarities — and that featured the illegal occupation of university buildings that had to be ended by the New York City Police Department, which made several arrests; an illegal encampment that also had to be dismantled by the NYPD, with resulting arrests; and harassment of Jewish students that violated both university standards and (in my view) federal civil rights law.
Khalil carried himself as a senior associate of Columbia University Apartheid Divest. As the New York Times reports, CUAD expressly backs “armed resistance” by Hamas and recently rescinded an apology it had offered after one of its members said Columbia should be “grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” The group promotes the radical leftist claim that the United States and Canada are oppressor regimes that are “occupying” “Turtle Island,” having seized it from indigenous peoples. CUAD has also promoted a “Resistance 101” panel that featured a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a designated foreign terrorist organization — who proceeded to laud his “friends and brothers” from Hamas and yet another foreign terrorist organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (Another panelist at the event: “There is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas. . . . These are the people that are on the front lines defending Palestine.”)
Khalil projected himself as the pro-Hamas agitators’ intermediary with the university administration, from which they were seeking to coerce concessions, including divestment from Israel. To repeat what I’ve previously argued, that is not constitutionally protected speech and association; it is extortionate conduct.
Nevertheless, even if we assumed for argument’s sake that at issue here was merely conduct that would be First Amendment–protected if engaged in by Americans, aliens may be removed (or excluded) from the United States over such behavior. Under Sections 1227(a)(4)(C)(i) and 1182(a)(3)(C)(i) through (iv) of the immigration laws, deportation is permissible if “the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest,” and has notified the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees of the identity of the alien and the grounds for the secretary’s determination in a timely manner.
Khalil’s removal hearing was held in Louisiana on Friday before Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans, who authorized his deportation. In connection with the hearing, the Department of Homeland Security submitted a memorandum from Secretary Rubio, asserting that he had a reasonable ground to believe Khalil’s “presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” In that connection, Rubio noted that, pursuant to the afore-described statutes, the determination may be based on “the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful,” as long as the secretary “personally” makes the required “determination.”
Rubio represented that he had made the determination in the case of Khalil (and of an apparent associate of Khalil’s whose name was redacted from the submission) based on information in the government’s files regarding Khalil’s “participation and role . . . in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters [sic] a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.” Moreover, Rubio based his decision on “citations for unlawful activity during these [campus] protests” (which I’ve described above).
Khalil’s activities and presence, Rubio assesses, “undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.” The secretary also stressed that it is Trump administration foreign policy to “champion core American interests and American citizens”; consequently, “condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective.”
Naturally, there has been uproar, particularly from Islamists and leftists, because Rubio’s determination does not rely on any criminal allegations. There is, however, no legal requirement that exclusion or removal be based on criminal activity — the point of mandating that the secretary of state personally make a determination is that the assessment is based on a reasonable government judgment, not a crime.
It would be ridiculous to require waiting for an alien’s disruptive, pro-terrorist conduct to evolve into concrete criminality before the government could exclude or expel him. Furthermore, it has long been federal law, codified in Section 1182(a)(4), that an alien may be excluded for membership in a totalitarian party, or a subdivision or affiliate thereof. This illustrates, again, that no crime is required to disqualify an alien; and given CUAD’s support of totalitarian entities (designated foreign terrorist organizations), it underscores the reasonableness of Secretary Rubio’s determination.
The order granting removal was the right call, regardless of the caterwauling that has already resulted. The president must be permitted to expel non-Americans who are pro-Hamas, antisemitic agitators. An alien, even an LPR, is a guest in the United States, not a citizen of the United States. The Constitution does not command that we abide in our midst aliens who champion anti-American, counter-constitutional programs. It is thus fitting and essential that Congress has vested removal authority in the secretary of state — the high executive officer subordinate only to the president in the execution of American foreign policy.
Rubio is entirely right that tolerating the presence and activities of antisemitic agitators who cheer on the October 7 jihadists still at war with our ally Israel — terrorist organizations for which it has long been a federal felony to provide support — could detrimentally impact our foreign relations. If our campuses are seen as safe havens for Jew hatred against which the government refuses to act, it would damage our relations with Israel, compromise our dealings with the Muslim Middle East (particularly Iran, which is orchestrating the multifront war against Israel), and make the United States more vulnerable to infiltration by jihadists.
The immigration court’s decision to remove Khalil is well justified. Against its habits, the administration should respond to it with sobriety, not crazy talk. We’re still less than 100 days into President Trump’s second term, yet there is already abundant reason to fear that Democrats will retake control of Congress next year, swept in by blowback over the president’s disregard for the Constitution’s due-process safeguards and limits on executive power. If that happens, the righteous initiative to expel legal aliens who promote antisemitic mayhem will be delegitimized. That would be disastrous for national security.