By: Sydney Umstead, News Editor
Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate from Columbia University, is facing threats of deportation despite his status as a permanent citizen.
Khalil “had helped lead high-profile campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza,” according to The New York Times. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Khalil of “participating in protests that he described as antisemitic and supportive of the terrorist group Hamas.” Moreover, Rubio stated, “Foreigners who come to the United States and do such things … will have their visas or green cards revoked and be kicked out.”
However, Khalil, who received his master’s degree from Columbia in December, is “married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.” Despite also having a green card, he “was arrested by immigration officers on Saturday in his apartment in Manhattan,” and then sent to a detention center in Louisiana, according to The New York Times. During the protests, he was a “negotiator and spokesman for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian group.”
In order for the case against Khalil to be made, Rubio has to rely “on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives him sweeping power to expel foreigners,” The New York Times reported. Rubio cites antisemitism as the grounds for attempting to deport Khalil. People with knowledge on the matter told The New York Times that “Mr. Khalil’s presence in the United States, ... would undermine that objective because the protests he helped lead were antisemitic and fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
In regard to the provision as well as the rights established in the First and Fifth Amendments, “the case appears likely to set up a major test of whether that statute, at least as applied to this situation, is constitutional.”
In Manhattan, one federal judge has ordered “the government not to remove Mr. Khalil from the United States while his case is pending.” However, since Khalil has been moved to Louisiana, the judge’s jurisdiction is “unclear.”
While the updates regarding Khalil’s case are unclear, Trump has stated that his case was “the first arrest of many to come,” The New York Times wrote.