TOI Correspondent from Washington: The Trump administration has a clear message to foreign students and green card holders who espouse views inimical to the security of the United States: expect to be deported to your home country.
In a significantly broader interpretation of existing US laws with regards to deportation of legal residents, Senior Trump administration officials on Monday indicated they had little tolerance for political activism by foreign students and resident aliens, such as the anti-Israeli protests in many liberal US college campuses, which they see as tantamount to support for terrorist outfits like Hamas.
“No one has the “right” to a visa or a green card. If you support terrorism we don’t want you here,” WhiteHouse Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller said, even as a New York judge ordered the administration to not to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student of Columbia University who has been arrested for his purported support to the Palestinian cause in campus demonstrations.
Also read: Why is US trying to deport green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil? Five questions answered
“Vast numbers of foreign nationals who support terrorism and reject American values have been awarded visas. Revoking them is a national security imperative,” Miller, an anti-immigration hardliner, said in a post on X, adding, “We must only admit this who embrace the core principles of our civilization.”
Administration officials have not laid out the case for Khalil’s arrest and deportation clearly, but Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, tasked with deporting illegal immigrants from the US, warned that the Palestinian activist could be the first of many legal foreign nationals who could be sent packing despite having US permanent residency (green cards) — because their political activism, which the Trump administration sees as supporting terrorism, violates US laws.
“Did he violate the terms of his visa? Did he violate the terms of his residency here, you know, committing crimes, attacking Israeli students, locking down buildings, destroying property? Absolutely,” Homan told Fox Business, even though the administration has yet to press charges in court.
“Any resident alien who commits a crime is eligible for deportation,” Homan said, making the case that the campus demonstrations was more than just a protest over the retributory Israeli attack on Gaza.
The Homeland Security department, where Homan is in charge of enforcement and removal operations as Trump’s border czar, said Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student, has been arrested for “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization” as part of its commitment to “enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting US national security.”
While New York Judge Jesse Furman has stayed Khalil’s deportation saying he will review a petition challenging the legality of the detention, the State Department is expected to rely on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that says any “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.”
Homan said Khalil could be the first of many immigrants who may be deported despite having green cards, echoing President Trump, who stepped into the issue to say, “ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of @Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come.”
“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,” Trump said, even as the issue has become a lightning rod and a test case for the US First Amendment relating to free speech.
Several Democratic lawmakers, including Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, of Palestinian and Somali heritage respectively, have objected to Khalil’s detention and possible deportation, saying the administration’s “illegal action set a dangerous precedent” with regards to the constitutional rights to free speech and due process. Blowback from MAGA has been swift: They need to be deported too — even if they happen to be naturalized citizens.