It should go without saying, but America does not need more Hamas sympathizers.
Yet this simple truth seems to confound a wide variety of commentators across the political spectrum. This week, the White House announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be deporting an apparently green card-holding Columbia University graduate student named Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil came to the United States after a stint at the Hamas front United Nations Relief and Works Agency, to study at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. There, he quickly became a leader of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group, a group that repeatedly and openly sympathized with Hamas after the Oct. 7 massacres in Israel. He acted as a spokesman for the takeover of Hamilton Hall on the Columbia campus.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained, “This is not about free speech. This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with.” He added, “No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card.”
This should be perfectly obvious under the law. U.S. Code 1227 includes among the classes of deportable aliens “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.” Obviously, having Hamas sympathizers who help lead groups that openly advocate for terrorist violence would be within this category. Furthermore, as lawyer Andrew McCarthy writes, “If reports are correct, Khalil was active as an agent of agitators who carried out lawless activities. That is not mere speech and association, and it would be unlawful if engaged in by Americans — indeed, that is why dozens of Americans were arrested in connection with the campus unrest.”
Nonetheless, Democrats came rushing to Khalil’s aid. The Senate Judiciary Committee tweeted out a picture of Khalil with the caption, “Free Mahmoud Khalil.” They have issued no such tweet in support of actual American citizens being held hostage by Hamas in terror tunnels. Their purported argument is that Khalil’s speech is being violated — even though his activities clearly fall within a category of behavior that is not protected by law, as deemed by the Secretary of State. In fact, as law professor Eugene Kontorovich points out, the Biden administration announced that it would ban travel visas to Israelis who “disrupt or prevent efforts to achieve a two-state solution.” None of the Democrats at that time fulminated about free speech rights. There is a reason why. And that reason is simple: The Democratic Party, writ large, sympathizes with those who sympathize with Hamas.
A fringe on the Republican side of the aisle feels similarly. There is great inconsistency in the fact that many on the right who object to Khalil’s deportation are the strongest advocates of immigration restrictionism; apparently they are deeply perturbed with Indian engineers working at Google on H-1B visas but are all in on behalf of terror supporters who hate Jews.
Then again, most Americans look at this case and innately understand President Donald Trump’s simple take: “I think we ought to get them all out of the country. They’re troublemakers. They’re agitators. They don’t love our country. … You can have them.” If Trump’s opponents keep taking the side of people like Mahmoud Khalil, they will keep ending up on the wrong side of the American people.
Ben Shapiro‘s new collection, “Facts and Furious: The Facts About America and Why They Make Leftists Furious,” is available now. Shapiro is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author. To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at https://us-east-2.protection.sophos.com?d=creators.com&u=d3d3LmNyZWF0b3JzLmNvbQ==&p=m&i=NWNkYWM3YTAwOWUwNjYxNGI5MDk1Y2Qx&t=ZHFVdW9OK0NvTHVOcjV1UDREamNCNzUrVVJOL3lBb0tKaDZ2NzlLZFhlUT0=&h=9a9b7d35ab624987bc82405cfd07027b&s=AVNPUEhUT0NFTkNSWVBUSVZ-5NDefVEieU0l6lp4CqDvjGVQwTp4Ph_fusLx2_7Z6w.
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This is just another demonstration of badly we have allowed the rule of law to decline in this country over the 10 to 15 years. I’m not surprised that the Democrats have devolved to supporting someone like Khalil, who openly advocates for the support of Hamas and the killing of Jews wherever they can be found. That is just who the Democrats are these days. They love authoritarian regimes of any stripe, so of course they will rally around someone like Khalil.
The law is clearly on the side of DOJ and ICE in this matter as the statuette quoted is quite clear. That yet another Democrat appointed, left-wing, federal district court judge chooses to inject himself into a matter he clearly has no real legal standing to interfere with is just another example of what we have allowed the American legal system to devolve down to. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will get involved, yet again to clarify the simple meaning of the laws already on the books, and Khalil will find himself on a flight out of the country.
It’s just a shame we have to go through this long, dragged out and very expensive, taxpayer-funded process, time and time again, to simply enforce laws that are already on the books. There’s a whole lot of things that need to be fixed in this country and cleaning the Democrat induced corruption out of the justice system is right up there in priority with everything else.
When Daniel Pearl was beheaded there came no whisper from democrats or fellow journalists. When Danish paper published the cartoons of Mohamed there were cowardice and the head in the sand from the rest of the world press. There is no word to describe that, shame would be a compliment .Always ready to make a martyr from a criminal ,but would not endanger themselves by participating physically in fight for justice leftist style Not one of them would think of going to fight like they did in Spanish civil war
please send all non citizen supporters of organization against US many advicating DEATH TO AMERICA or calling us the GREAT SATAN . tHEY ARE HERE TO TRY AND DESTOY OUR COUNTRY student visa revoked