A federal court has decided that anti-Israel protester Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for his role in organizing protests against the Jewish state at Columbia University.
Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans noted in her decision on Friday in a Louisiana courtroom that the government met its burden of proof and Kahlil, 30, can be removed under existing visa statutes, Fox News reported.
“I would like to quote what you said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness,” the pro-Palestinian protester said during his hearing.
“Clearly, what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process,” he said.
“This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me are afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months,” he complained.
Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security said that Kahlil misrepresented some of the organizations he is involved with in his visa application.
The DHS attorneys said that he intentionally did not disclose that he was employed with the Syrian office in the British Embassy in Beirut when he applied for permanent residency in the United States.
That said, he was “inadmissible at the time of his adjustment” because of “fraud or willful misrepresentation of material fact” in his application.
They said that he also did not disclose his work with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees or the fact that he is a member of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
The student protester’s attorney criticized the judge’s decision as “unjust as it is alarming.”
“This is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and a dangerous precedent for anyone who believes in free speech and political expression,” the attorney, Sabrine Mohamah, said.
“Mahmood is currently imprisoned in Louisiana, a state that detains over 7,000 people daily and serves as the second-largest hub for immigration detention in the U.S. Louisiana’s nine detention centers, eight of which are privately operated, include the only ICE facility in the country directly connected to an airport, thus streamlining mass deportations across the state,” Mohamah said.
In response to the decision, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the Columbia University graduate “hates America.”
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” the secretary said. “Good riddance.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded to a request for evidence by the court on Wednesday, where he referenced a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to justify deporting Khalil.
But the student’s attorneys complained that the government’s detention of Kahlil is “extraordinary and unprecedented.”
“President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio could apply it to any speech supporting Palestinian rights by any noncitizen. And the policy provides no standards or notice as to what specific statements might subject noncitizens to this unprecedented determination,” they said.
“Many noncitizens across the country — including lawful permanent residents like Mr. Khalil — now live in fear that they will be next if their actual or imputed speech brings them into the crosshairs of this administration, and many are choosing to stay silent about their strongly-held beliefs,” the attorneys said.
In an op-ed, titled “A letter to Columbia,” Khalil said that the school was guilty of “laying the groundwork for my abduction.”
“The situation is oddly reminiscent of when I fled the brutality of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and sought refuge in Lebanon,” he wrote. “The logic used by the federal government to target myself and my peers is a direct extension of Columbia’s repression playbook concerning Palestine.”