“Free Mahmoud Khalil” is quickly becoming the left’s new George Floyd rallying cry, as radicals once again champion criminals, thugs, and terrorist sympathizers. But their argument has a major flaw — Khalil is already free. He is free to return to Syria anytime and continue promoting Hamas. The government is not detaining him indefinitely or seeking to incarcerate him. President Trump is simply enforcing long-standing immigration laws that have been ignored for too long.
Last week, Trump announced that ICE had targeted Khalil, the Syrian national responsible for the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia University, for deportation. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s colleges and universities to comply. Thank you!”
We don’t need to let ‘intifada globalists’ in our club.
Last month, I outlined how more than 120 years of uninterrupted case law confirms that deportation is not a punishment but a consequence of enforcing national sovereignty. The United States has the right to set conditions for admitting noncitizens. While the government cannot fine or imprison individuals — citizens or noncitizens — for expressing pro-terrorist or pro-communist views, it can require foreign nationals to leave. Freedom of speech protects against incarceration, but it does not grant immunity from deportation.
Recognizing the strength of this legal distinction, Khalil’s supporters are now arguing that there is a difference between those on immigrant visas and those on nonimmigrant student visas. Khalil arrived in the United States from Syria in December 2022 and became a legal permanent resident in 2024. A federal district judge in New York, disregarding the Supreme Court’s long-standing precedent on plenary power, temporarily halted his removal.
In reality, the Constitution does not distinguish between different visa types for noncitizens. Legal permanent residents do not have greater constitutional protection against removal than foreign students. Due process rights for noncitizens depend on what Congress establishes through legislation. While green-card holders typically have more legal avenues to remain in the country, Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act explicitly grants the president authority to remove any noncitizen who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.”
This is precisely what Khalil did. He led the now-banned Columbia University Apartheid Divest group, which occupied the campus and called for a global intifada in America. Like it or not, his actions fit the legal definition of endorsing terrorist activity and persuading others to do the same. Again, we cannot write such a law to detain indefinitely citizens or even aliens based upon such expressions, but we can ask foreigners to leave.
One is free to debate the political merits of these statutes, but the constitutional moorings are solid. As the Supreme Court ruled in Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889):
That the government of the United States, through the action of the legislative department, can exclude aliens from its territory is a proposition which we do not think open to controversy. Jurisdiction over its own territory to that extent is an incident of every independent nation. It is a part of its independence. If it could not exclude aliens it would be to that extent subject to the control of another power.
Holding a green card increases the likelihood of remaining in the United States and eventually becoming a citizen, but it does not provide a constitutional guarantee. As Justice James Iredell, one of the Supreme Court’s original members, wrote:
Any alien coming to this country must or ought to know, that this being an independent nation, it has all the rights concerning the removal of aliens which belong by the law of nations to any other; that while he remains in the country in the character of an alien, he can claim no other privilege than such as an alien is entitled to, and consequently, whatever [risk] he may incur in that capacity is incurred voluntarily, with the hope that in due time by his unexceptionable conduct, he may become a citizen of the United States.
The risk of removal is not limited to committing a specific crime that must be proven through due process. It also applies to behavior deemed harmful to national interests, which falls under the discretion of the political branches to enforce.
Emer de Vattel, the Swiss scholar on international law frequently cited by America’s founders and in early American case law, made it clear that removal does not require criminal activity to be justified. He wrote:
Every nation has the right to refuse to admit a foreigner into the country, when he cannot enter without putting the nation in evident danger, or doing it a manifest injury. … Thus, also, it has a right to send them elsewhere, if it has just cause to fear that they will corrupt the manners of the citizens; that they will create religious disturbances, or occasion any other disorder, contrary to the public safety. In a word, it has a right, and is even obliged, in this respect, to follow the rules which prudence dictates.
A judge has no authority to interfere with immigration officers’ decisions. Aliens are not entitled to due process through courts to determine whether they meet the statutory definition of an excluded alien. As the Supreme Court ruled in Knauff v. Shaughnessy (1950):
The decision to admit or to exclude an alien may be lawfully placed with the [p]resident, who may in turn delegate the carrying out of this function to a responsible executive officer. … The action of the executive officer under such authority is final and conclusive. Whatever the rule may be concerning deportation of persons who have gained entry into the United States, it is not within the province of any court, unless expressly authorized by law, to review the determination of the political branch of the Government to exclude a given alien.
Some may object to the sight of individuals being handcuffed for expressing anti-American views, but such actions are only taken to enforce removal. As the court stated in Turner v. Williams, “Detention or temporary confinement as part of the means necessary to give effect to the exclusion or expulsion was held valid.”
Unlike in criminal cases, federal law allows an alien facing removal who wishes to avoid detention to leave the country voluntarily.
From a political standpoint, a foreigner who holds a green card while calling for jihad provides even more reason for swift removal. If he naturalizes, the country will be left with a self-hating American citizen. As Gouverneur Morris stated at the Constitutional Convention, “Every society from a great nation down to a club had the right of declaring the conditions on which new members should be admitted, there can be room for no complaint.”
We don’t need to let “intifada globalists” in our club.
Immigration, Green cards, Mahmoud khalil, Freedom of speech, Hamas, Columbia university, Protests, Israel hamas war, Syria, Student visas, Intifada, Globalist, National security, Anti-semitism, Anti-american, The left, Opinion & analysis
