March 14, 2025

Setting the Precedent: Mahmoud Khalil’s Deportation Case

This will be the litmus test for other student agitator evictions.

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 When ICE took him into custody, it purportedly told him that his student visa, not his green card, had been revoked.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.”

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.

Want more articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to The Patriot Post today! It's Right. It's Free.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2025 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.