Deporting Mahmoud Khalil Is Anti-American
It might be legal, but Khalil’s arrest should worry all free speech advocates.
The New York Post called him an “anti-Israel agitator.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he’s “a supporter of Hamas.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt derided him as someone who “took advantage” of “the privilege of coming to this country to study at one of our nation’s finest universities” by “siding with terrorists.”
I am talking, of course, about Mahmoud Khalil SIPA ’24, who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 8 at his Columbia-owned apartment. Rubio said that he revoked Khalil’s permanent resident status, and Khalil is currently in detention at an ICE facility in Louisiana.
Khalil was a lead organizer for Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and was one of the group’s lead negotiators during the encampments of last spring. He told the Associated Press that he was investigated by Columbia for allegedly organizing an “unauthorized marching event” that glorified the October 7 terrorist attacks and for playing a “substantial role” in circulating social media posts criticizing Zionism.
Some call the government’s actions anti-terrorism. To me, it is clearly neo-McCarthyism.
The White House’s Position
On March 10, a White House official told The Free Press, “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” but that he poses a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.”
“This is not fundamentally about free speech,” Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “It’s more importantly about who do we as an American public decide gets to join our national community.”
In other words, the White House argues that Khalil and other non-citizens simply do not have the same free speech rights as American citizens. Under certain circumstances, they may be removed from the “national community” at the administration’s discretion.
They are not entirely mistaken. While foreigners who are here legally have the privilege to reside in the U.S. and exercise their right to free speech, they have no fundamental right to be in the U.S. in the first place.
Though the government is allowed and, in my opinion, wholly justified to deport foreign students who have committed a crime, the legal basis for deportation over speech and opinions is far more complicated than Vance makes it seem.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, “an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
The act also specifies that the government can deport an alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity,” persuades others to endorse terrorism, or is a “representative” of a group that endorses terrorism.
Exactly which actions constitute an endorsement of terrorism or would have “adverse foreign policy consequences,” however, are subject to debate. The White House alleges that Khalil was distributing pro-Hamas pamphlets. He was videoed at the March 5 Milstein Center sit-in holding a megaphone, during which protestors distributed pamphlets from the Hamas Media Office. After his arrest, a video emerged of Khalil speaking at a Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine event during which he said, “We’ve tried armed resistance, which is legitimate under international law, but Israel calls it terrorism.” As a group, CUAD has repeatedly praised the October 7 attacks, Hamas, and other terrorist groups.
That said, there is no substantial evidence that Khalil himself distributed pamphlets or explicitly endorsed Hamas. While he did serve as a negotiator for CUAD, Khalil said in an interview with CNN last spring that he did not personally participate in the encampments over fear of losing his student visa. While CUAD has garnered much controversy for echoing some of Hamas’ viewpoints, are we really saying that anyone affiliated with Columbia’s pro-Palestinian movement is individually responsible for every single one of the broader movement’s transgressions? We should not resort to collective punishment in America. It is also worth noting that Khalil has never been arrested for a crime.
Any enforcement of the 1952 act against Khalil must also respect the due process rights of green card holders, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld. Some legal experts say it is unclear whether the First Amendment protects foreigners from deportation for their speech. On the other hand, both the American Civil Liberties Union and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression believe that Khalil is protected from deportation under the First Amendment.
On April 11, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Khaliil was deportable. “The department [of Homeland Security] has met its burden to establish removability by clear and convincing evidence,” Judge Jamee Comans said at a hearing, noting that as an immigration judge under the executive branch, she had no power to rule on free speech issues. The final decision will likely lie with the federal judiciary; a New Jersey District Court judge has temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation pending further hearings.
But all this legal talk could be for nothing. The White House has recently taken to defying court orders, especially regarding deportations. Last month, the Trump administration appeared to disregard a court order to turn around two deportation flights carrying suspected Venezuelan gang members. A Lebanese professor at Brown University, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, was deported despite a judge’s order. The president has a military, and the courts do not.
Ethical Considerations
Legality and procedure aside, there is an ethical dimension to consider. The entire Khalil situation is eerily reminiscent of the Red Scare—and not only because a law from the 1950s is being used to justify his deportation.
Speaking to Fox’s Sean Hannity on March 11, Leavitt said that “the legacy media think that if you’re a foreign national, you can behave in any manner that you want. You can protest and push Hamas propaganda. You can side with a foreign terrorist organization that has killed American citizens.”
“Under this administration, that type of activity—siding with radical Islamic terrorists—will not stand,” Leavitt added.
The president, too, has touted this dogmatic, us-versus-them mentality that paints all dissenters as enemies of the state. On Truth Social, he called Khalil “a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University.” He claimed that the administration knew of “more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” and views their presence as “contrary to our national and foreign policy interests.”
This tone would only be surprising to someone who has been in a coma since 2015. But, troublingly, it is the same McCarthyite rhetoric that was used to purge both communists and left-leaning individuals from government and polite society in the 1950s. By likening Khalil’s speech to “anti-American” Hamas sympathy, the Trump administration is seeking moral justification. Columbia students may not buy it, but many Americans who do not attend Ivy League universities will.
As Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic, “Trump and his advisers simply hope the public is foolish or shortsighted enough to believe that if they are not criminals, or deviants, or terrorists, or foreigners, or traitors, then they have no reason to worry.” The modus operandi: If you fall outside of our Overton window, we will take action. “You may believe that Khalil does not deserve free speech or due process. But if he does not have them, then neither do you,” Serwer wrote.
The Trump administration also demanded on March 13 that Columbia adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition of antisemitism as a precondition for recovering federal funds. This definition includes certain anti-Israel rhetoric, such as referring to the state of Israel as a racist endeavor or comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, which, if adopted by Columbia, would chill campus speech that is critical of Israel. While Columbia has thus far not agreed to this demand, it is nonetheless worrying that the White House is attempting to police anti-Israel rhetoric on our campus in order to safeguard Zionism, which is an ideology, not a protected class.
While this purge may have started with Khalil and Columbia, the Trump administration has since attempted to deport other students at Columbia and beyond under the same foreign policy and anti-terrorism justification.
Perhaps we must look no further than the words of our vice president: “The professors are the enemy.” There is no question that professors often espouse radical ideologies, the type that can alienate certain students or even lead our nation down a precarious path. But isn’t the very point of a university to challenge our biases and preconceptions? Joseph Massad, like Edward Said before him, is no enemy. Neither are the students who, peacefully, believe in their worldview. McCarthyism, however, was a very dark period of our history, entirely antithetical to the very idea of America. Now, the Trump administration welcomes it back, or as the president might put it: Shalom, America.
The Dangers of Censorship
If Khalil’s arrest has shown us anything, it is that in 2025, anti-Zionism is the new communism. This radical chilling of speech has outraged not only the usual woke suspects, but also people from all across the ideological spectrum.
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter wrote on X, “There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the first amendment?”
Candace Owens, a MAGA firebrand who was too radical even for the Daily Wire, told Piers Morgan that Khalil’s detention upset her and that she wanted the Trump administration “to provide us with something concrete” justifying Khalil’s deportation. Owens warned that the White House’s actions could “backfire” on conservatives under a future Democratic administration.
Even comic Bill Maher, a vocal opponent of pro-Palestinian protests, said on his show Real Time that while in his opinion Khalil “hates this country” and “hates Western civilization,” free speech is nonetheless about “defending the dirtbags you hate.”
It is a rare occurrence for Ann Coulter, Candace Owens, and Bill Maher to all agree with each other and with progressives on something.
Of course, the concerns of Jewish students on campus who have been targeted and demonized are legitimate. I cannot imagine how difficult life at Columbia has been for them, many of whom have a personal stake in the conflict. Khalil’s organization, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), has indeed praised October 7 and called for the end of Western civilization. Many Jewish and Israeli students have been physically harassed. Last spring, a Columbia rabbi advised Jewish students to go home and stay home because of “extreme antisemitism.” Outside the University gates on 116th and Broadway, geopolitical tensions have often devolved into ethnic ones.
Though I am not Jewish, have a Muslim last name, and am opposed to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, even a good atheist like myself was harassed online last semester by a student. The reason? I follow various Israeli Instagram accounts, including that of the State of Israel (shame on me!).
This is all to say that I am acutely aware of the excesses of student activists. Yet so far, it appears Khalil was not one of the protestors harassing Jewish students. If he were, that would be a different matter. As a negotiator for CUAD, he was understandably a more nuanced voice. The Wall Street Journal, by no measure a pro-Palestinian publication, reported that he forged ties with Columbia’s Jewish community and attended Shabbat dinners. That’s not on my antisemitism bingo card.
But let’s assume that Khalil did engage in radical speech and actions. Unless he materially supported terrorism or committed a crime, it shouldn’t matter—free speech should mean the freedom to say unwelcome, unpopular, and yes, radical things. “Uncomfortable” speech is the First Amendment. This is especially important on college campuses, where students are meant to explore and test the limits of their political ideologies.
In his widely circulated “Letter to Columbia,” published in the Columbia Daily Spectator on April 4, Khalil called the censorship of free speech and detention of dissidents “oddly reminiscent of when I fled the brutality of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and sought refuge in Lebanon.”
“Know that your neutrality on Palestine will not protect you. When the time comes for the federal government to target other causes, it will be your names that Columbia will offer on a silver platter, it will be your pleas that fall on deaf ears, it will be your just causes that are stonewalled,” Khalil wrote.
So, sure, it could be legal for the Trump administration to deport Khalil. But alleged “adverse foreign policy consequences” simply do not justify censoring him, detaining him, and preventing him from witnessing the birth of his first child. Penalizing speech, no matter its legal justification, is inherently contrary to the spirit of this country. I can’t think of anything more anti-American.
Mr. Mohammadi is a first-year at Columbia College majoring in American Studies. He is a staff writer for Sundial.
Free Free 116th Street! 🇺🇸❤️🇵🇸