Pro-Hamas activist’s deportation not a ‘free speech’ matter and law is on Trump’s side: experts

Legal experts slammed a recent left-wing narrative that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest of a pro-Hamas activist who led protests on Columbia University’s campus is an attack on the First Amendment, telling Fox News Digital the case is rooted in national security concerns and that immigration laws support the Trump administration’s efforts to deport the agitator.

“The State Department has pulled the first visa of a foreign student who engaged in pro-Hamas disruptions. That’s the right thing to do if we want to fix campus cultures,” Ilya Shapiro, the director of constitutional studies at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, wrote in an essay for the City Journal Friday. “And contrary to disingenuous critics, such a move poses no First Amendment problems.” 

“While the government can’t send foreigners to jail for saying things it doesn’t like, it can and should deny or pull visas for those who advocate for causes inimical to the United States,” he wrote. “There’s nothing objectional or controversial about removing those who harass, intimidate, vandalize, and otherwise interfere with an educational institution’s core mission. More, please.” 

Pro-Hamas activist Mahmoud Khalil was taken into ICE custody a day after Shapiro’s essay was published at his Columbia University-owned apartment in Manhattan. The Department of Homeland Security said he was a former Columbia graduate student who “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” 

TRUMP VOWS ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVIST MAHMOUD KHALIL WAS ‘FIRST ARREST OF MANY TO COME’ 

Khalil, who reportedly graduated with a master’s degree from Columbia in December 2024, helped lead the anti-Israel protest that plagued the campus in April 2024, including as a negotiator for radical agitators students on campus as they set up a tent encampment and took over an academic building, Hamilton Hall. 

He served as a leader of a group called Columbia United Apartheid Divest, which demanded that Columbia completely divest from Israel amid the country’s war with Hamas that began on Oct. 7, 2023. The divest group said its main goal was to “challenge the settler-colonial violence that Israel perpetrates with the support of the United States and its allies,” according to an op-ed published in the Columbia Spectator in November 2023.

DHS additionally reported that Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

President Donald Trump and his administration have railed against the protests on college campuses, which hit a fever pitch in 2024 before Trump was back in office. 

The 47th president signed an executive order in January putting pro-Hamas protesters in the U.S. on student visas on notice that they will be deported. 

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” the president said in a Jan. 30 fact sheet on the executive order. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

JUDGE BLOCKS ANTI-ISRAEL COLUMBIA AGITATOR MAHMOUD KHALIL FROM DEPORTATION AS POLITICIANS COME TO HIS DEFENSE

Khalil was born in Syria in 1995, the New York Post reported, and has been in the U.S. on a green card. He is under investigation as a possible threat to U.S. national security, with investigators reportedly finding “antisemitic and hateful” posts on Khalil’s social media accounts, White House sources told Fox News Tuesday. DHS, the Department of Justice and the secretary of state are involved in the investigation, according to sources. 

Following Khalil’s detention, Democrats and other left-wing activists and groups slammed the arrest as an attack on the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech and assembly. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s X account also called for Khalil to be freed, which was met by a response from the White House account quoting Trump that more arrests will soon follow. 

Julian Epstein, an attorney and former chief counsel to the Democratic House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital that “the arrests and deportation of pro-Hamas organizers seems not only legal but long overdue.”

“The Immigration and Naturalization Act allows the denial or revocation of any visa holder who espouses or otherwise supports terrorist organizations,” he continued. “Further, 18 USC 245 makes it a criminal offense for any of these protesters to intimidate, harass or impede Jewish students from moving freely about campus and attending classes.” 

Epstein continued that deportation is a “mild step” and that the DOJ should consider criminal prosecutions of violent protesters. 

“The Columbia University protesters’ support for Hamas has been widely reported, as have their violent actions targeted at Jews,” he said. “Deportation is a mild step. The DOJ should be considering criminal prosecutions.”

ICE AGENTS ARREST ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVIST WHO LED PROTESTS ON COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CAMPUS FOR MONTHS 

Shapiro added in his essay that immigration law clearly outlines that an individual’s visa, which offers temporary entry to the U.S., or green card, which grants permanent residence to a non-American, can be revoked. 

“Indeed, it’s a basic application of U.S. immigration law, which says that people here on a visa (tourist, student, employment, or otherwise) who reveal themselves to be ineligible for that visa – ‘inadmissible,’ in the parlance of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) – can have their visa revoked,” Shapiro continued in the piece.

In response to claims that the Trump administration was violating Khalil’s First Amendment rights, Shapiro responded on X that “green cards can be revoked. We have laws and must enforce them.”

Khalil “having a green card only changes the extent of the process due – a hearing before an immigration judge rather than just an administrative order – not the substance of the law or the outcome,” Shapiro added in comment to Fox News Digital Tuesday. 

U.S. officials also have stressed that the detention of Khalil is a matter of national security, not free speech, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio determining that the activist’s presence in the U.S. holds “serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” according to a senior State Department official. 

NYC MAYOR ON MAHMOUD KHALIL ARREST: ‘I DIDN’T SEE THAT SUPPORT FOR ME’

“Secretary Rubio found that his presence and activities in the U.S. would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest, rendering him deportable under Section 237 (a)(4)(C) of the [Immigration and Nationality Act],” a senior State Department official told Fox News Digital Tuesday. 

Section 237 (a)(4)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act details: “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.” 

There is no requirement that a crime be committed under this section of the law. Instead, it provides broad power to the secretary of state to declare an alien deportable.

Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney and executive director of the Lawfare Project, which focuses on the civil rights of the Jewish community, told Fox News Digital that Khalil is “warping the First Amendment” in an effort to justify his actions on campus. 

“Mahmoud Khalil is facing deportation because of his conduct, including allegedly engaging in building takeovers – criminal activity that endangers public safety – and endorsing and espousing terrorist activity in contravention of the Immigration and Nationality Act,” she said Tuesday. “Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, Khalil is trying to justify them by warping the First Amendment as somehow protecting his illegal conduct. It does not.” 

“Being some kind of ‘spokesperson’ for terror doesn’t immunize Khalil from liability for his acts and the acts of his co-conspirators,” Goldstein said. “The U.S. government has every right to revoke the visas or green cards of individuals who endorse or promote terrorism, and whose conduct deprives Americans of their civil rights.” 

She added that being a green card holder is a “privilege,” not a right, and that when a green card holder violates the conditions of their admittance to the U.S., they face the consequences. 

“Everyone here on a student visa, or who applies for a green card, is aware of their obligations, and of the expectations on their behavior as a condition for being in our country,” she said, noting that Khalil “was one of the leaders and organizers of multiple events targeting Jewish students.”

“This case isn’t about Khalil expressing his Jew-hatred through speech, it’s about him acting on that hate – about planning, and engaging in, actions that deprive others of their rights. It’s Khalil’s actions, not his words, that make him subject to deportation,” she said. 

New York state Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz, a Republican, also bucked the narrative that Khalil’s case is focused on First Amendment rights, saying he wasn’t arrested “for holding a sign or chanting in a quad,” he was arrested “because he actively engaged in activities aligned with Hamas, a blood-soaked organization that massacres civilians.”

“Let’s dispense with the nonsense – this isn’t a debate over free speech; it’s a matter of national security, plain and simple,” he said. “The First Amendment protects words, not actions taken in service of a terrorist cause.” 

Blumencranz took issue with New York leadership’s handling of the arrest, arguing that Democrats such as Gov. Kathy Hochul turned a blind eye to the protests that broke out on Columbia’s campus in 2024, which included Jewish students reporting that they feared for their safety and left campus. 

“This is the radical left’s twisted game: hijack the language of civil rights to shield those who openly support terror,” he said. “Cry ‘free speech’ when it’s convenient, stay silent when the mobs descend on Jewish students, and pretend that a man aiding Hamas is just a misunderstood activist. It’s a disgrace.” 

“Let’s be crystal clear – a green card is not a birthright,” he said. “It is a privilege. The United States has every right, and indeed a duty, to revoke it from anyone who uses their time here to foment extremism. But instead of backing law and order, politicians like Letitia James, Chuck Schumer, Kathy Hochul, Hakeem Jeffries and their radical allies are tripping over themselves to defend Khalil, all while ignoring the real victims: Jewish students forced to flee their own campus.” 

Following Khalil’s arrest, Trump warned that “many” more arrests will follow. 

“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump wrote in a post. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country – never to return again.”

A Manhattan federal judge ruled Monday that Khalil not be deported “unless and until the Court orders otherwise.” A hearing on his case is scheduled for Wednesday. He is being held at the Lasalle Detention facility in Louisiana, according to ICE. 

DEMOCRATS UNDER FIRE FOR BACKING ARRESTED PRO-HAMAS AGITATOR

His attorney has railed against his arrest, but said in a statement that Khalil is “healthy and his spirits are undaunted by his predicament.”

“The remarks by government officials, including the President, on social media only confirm the purpose – and illegality – of Mahmoud’s detention,” Khalil’s attorney, Amy E. Greer, said in a Monday statement. “He was chosen as an example to stifle entirely lawful dissent in violation of the First Amendment. While tomorrow or thereafter the government may cite the law or process, that toothpaste is out of the tube and irreversibly so. The government’s objective is as transparent as it is unlawful, and our role as Mahmoud’s lawyers is to ensure it does not prevail.”

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Fox News’ Diana Stancy, Danielle Wallace and Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.