An expert on immigration and national security said the United States is within its rights to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian Columbia University graduate student.
Khalil came here on a visa and is married to an American. He now has permanent resident status but is not a citizen.
The Trump administration is trying to deport him, arguing in a recent filing “the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe [Khalil’s] presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy.”
“Khalil is not a political prisoner,” as he claims, according to George Fishman with the Center for Immigration Studies. He wrote in an essay titled “It’s absolutely legal to deport hate-monger Mahmoud Khalil.”
“He is free to leave the United States whenever he chooses,” Fishman, a former counsel to the Department of Homeland Security, wrote in the New York Post. “Second, as an alien, he does not have the same First Amendment rights as an American citizen.”
Fishman reviewed Supreme Court rulings that he argues show foreigners do not have the same Constitutional protections.
He concluded:
Again and again, the courts have found that the administration’s decision to deport an agitator such as Khalil is justified.
Khalil is a guest in our country. Guests do not have a First Amendment “right” to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or incite genocide. They do have a “right” to the first plane out of here.
The Trump administration is also arguing Khalil committed “fraud” by not disclosing all his prior associations – including his work for the controversial “United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
Khalil also “failed to disclose” his “continuing employment as a Program Manager by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil speaks to a crowd; Fox 5/YouTube
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