Mahmoud Khalil on the New York Columbia University campus at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment, April 29, 2024. (Ted Shaffrey/The Associated Press )
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."
Mahmoud Khalil speaks at a press briefing organized by anti-Israel protesters who set up an encampment on Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus, June 1, 2024. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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.
Protesters rally against the arrest of former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil in New York, March 10, 2025. (Stephanie Keith for Fox News Digital)
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."
Demonstrators gather in Lower Manhattan to protest of the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, March 10, 2025. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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."
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Fox News' Diana Stancy, Danielle Wallace and Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pro-hamas-activists-deportation-not-free-speech-matter-law-trumps-side-experts