President Donald Trump promises that the arrest and possible deportation of a Palestinian activist involved in pro-Hamas riots at Columbia University will be the first "of many to come" as his administration cracks down on anti-Semitic and anti-Israel mobs on college campuses.
Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, who was a graduate student at Columbia until December, was detained Saturday by federal immigration agents in New York and flown to an immigration jail in Louisiana.
As a Green Card holder, you are granted authorization to reside and work in the country on a permanent basis.8 This status provides several rights and responsibilities, including the ability to live permanently in the United States provided you do not commit actions that would make you removable under immigration law.
Khalil is challenging the deportation order claiming free speech.
Ira Mehlman is media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform or FAIR.
"Taking over buildings and vandalizing them is not an act of free speech. Preventing people from getting their education that they are paying $71,000 a year for is not an exercise of free speech. Calling for the eradication of western civilization is seditious. There are all kinds of laws. Plus, it's funding for an organization that works closely with and has ties to terrorist organizations."
Mehlman acknowledges that Khalid is lawyering up.
"Obviously he has become a poster child for these far-left immigrant rights groups. They're going to probably contribute to his defense fund. So, it may take some time, but he probably will be at some point declared to be deportable from the United States."
