Former Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil is the first student agitator to be arrested and hopefully deported in connection with the riots on the Ivy League campus. Khalil was taken into custody last Saturday and was moved to Louisiana to facilitate a swift deportation. However, that deportation was stayed by Southern District of New York Judge Jesse Furman, who stated that Khalil won’t be deported “unless and until the Court orders otherwise.” His hearing was on Wednesday.

In the interim, we have learned more about Khalil. He was born in Syria to Palestinian parents and is an Algerian citizen. He received his undergraduate degree from the American University of Beirut, worked for the British government at its embassy in Beirut, and worked for an NGO called Jusoor as well as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which should be classified as a terrorist organization. UNRWA workers aided in the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and even held hostages for Hamas.

This was Khalil’s résumé, and yet he was still allowed into the country on a student visa to complete a master’s degree at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Khalil argues that ICE falsely arrested him. He holds a green card and is not currently in the United States on a student visa. When ICE took him into custody, it purportedly told him that his student visa, not his green card, had been revoked.

While it is unclear how long Khalil has held a green card, he likely applied for it during the process leading up to his marriage (his wife is a U.S. citizen). Regardless, the essential point is that because of his role in the Columbia campus “protests” (read: riots), his permission to reside in the U.S. is being revoked.

“If you tell us that you are in favor of a group like [Hamas] … we would deny your visa,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained. “No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card, by the way. So when you apply for a student visa or any visa to enter the United States, we have a right to deny you for virtually any reason.”

Absolute moral clarity and crystal clear truth by @marcorubio.

A must watch….pic.twitter.com/KaApHa9moa

— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) March 13, 2025

Khalil’s other argument is that his acting as a negotiator and participator in the “tentifada” and other illegal protests on camps were within his rights. As a green-card holder, he asserts that his ideological positions, free speech, and freedom of association were violated.

Much of his arguments hinge on his rights as a noncitizen of the U.S. As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy explains, Khalil is a lawful permanent resident (LPR), “a status in which the alien enjoys the most robust protection that our law provides for non-Americans.” However, an LPR does not have the same rights as an American citizen. Free speech and freedom of association don’t apply. The biggest perk of being an LPR is that you have due process rights and are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge who makes the final call regarding deportation.

Many have speculated that the grounds for revoking Khalil’s green card were based on supporting and promoting terrorists like Hamas. However, Secretary Rubio has decided to lay the grounds for deportation on the provision in §1227 of immigration law subsection ((a)(4)(C)), which states:

In general, 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.

Mahmoud Khalil does represent a national security risk. Furthermore, his actions do adversely affect foreign policy, as he and others like him denigrate America’s staunchest Middle East ally, Israel.

Khalil is fighting back in other ways apart from his immigration hearing. On Thursday, he sued Columbia University and its women-only institution, Barnard College, for releasing disciplinary records to the House Committee on Education and Workforce. The committee was interested in knowing which students had expressed or acted on anti-Semitism to the extent that they faced disciplinary action.

Khalil and seven other anonymous individuals are claiming they have been doxxed and otherwise harmed by this student list being given to the committee.

While this legal drama plays out, pro-Hamas “protests” have erupted all over the U.S. yet again. The imbroglio that garnered the most attention this week happened yesterday when rabble-rousers invaded Trump Tower and occupied the dining hall. The group, Jewish Voice for Peace, is about as Jewish as a ham sandwich; its members wore red shirts with slogans like “Jews Say Stop Arming Israel” and sported signs that read “Fight Nazis not students.”

Ninety-eight people were arrested by the NYPD.

Khalil’s immigration hearing will hopefully culminate in deportation and be the first of many. These leftist agitators have been a terrible blight on American university campuses, and administrators have only themselves to blame for not immediately quashing them the second the already reprehensible protests turned into destructive riots.