On the same day that Islamic State terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar murdered 15 Americans by plowing a car into a crowd in New Orleans, thousands of Hamas and Hezbollah supporters, many decked out in Islamist garb, descended onto Times Square in Manhattan, chanting, “Globalize the intifada.”

One of the organizers of the protest was Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a group often led by Syrian national Mahmoud Khalil.

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This week, Khalil, a former graduate student, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and now faces deportation, an enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive orders “prohibiting anti-Semitism.” I am assured by Democrats that his deportation is a ghastly assault on free speech.

Now, like anyone in the United States, Khalil enjoys the First Amendment right to spread his message. Being a bigot and warmonger isn’t a crime. Free expression is a fundamental and universal right. And one hopes Khalil will be free to express his opinions unfettered in his homeland of Syria or Algeria, where he is a citizen. Because he has no constitutional right to be in the U.S.

The Hamas-affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations noted that Khalil “is a lawful permanent resident of our nation who has not been charged with or convicted of a single crime.” So what?

You don’t need to be convicted of a crime to lose your immigration status. The immigration card system exists so that newcomers can be properly vetted. To become a citizen, you must exhibit “good moral character,” a criterion that Khalil doesn’t come close to meeting by any objective standard. Just obey the law, pay taxes, and stay out of trouble. Orchestrating and participating in harassment, vandalism, bigotry, and civil unrest at a once-esteemed Ivy League university falls under the label of “trouble.”

Then again, according to 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(B), Khalil’s permanent residency can also be denied or revoked if he “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.” (My italics.)

Khalil, who came here initially on a student visa, does little else. The CUAD brags about fighting for the “total eradication of Western civilization” and explicitly advocates “global intifada” and “armed resistance” by Hamas, an organization designated a terrorist group by the U.S. Justice Department. As the New York Times reported last year, the group was “openly supporting militant groups fighting Israel and rescinding an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn’t out killing Zionists.” (Me again.)

One of the accusations against Khalil, leveled by Columbia’s new Office of Institutional Equity, is that he organized an event glorifying Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Hamas, of course, not only murdered 35 Americans on Oct. 7, 2023, but numerous citizens before that day. The first and second “intifadas” were responsible for the deaths of more American citizens, including children and diplomatic personnel. Since Khalil is so fond of the intifada, maybe he can now join his friends on the front lines.

Khalil’s defenders contend that his only crime was being “critical of Israel” — a popular euphemism for advocating the destruction of the Jewish state. No one has ever stopped anyone from being critical of Israel. If Khalil was merely writing or giving speeches offering the customary fantasies about “genocide” and “occupation” instead of organizing illegal “protests” on Columbia University grounds, no one would have noticed he existed. Blocking access to buildings and classes and intimidating Jewish students, tactics adopted by Khalil’s group, do not constitute “free expression.”

Khalil, it should be remembered, promised that protests and encampments were just the beginning — “the limit is the sky,” he said. The sky apparently means having masked nutjobs barging into classes while passing out flyers that illustrated a boot stamping on a Star of David. Khalil and his minions, much like Klansmen, use keffiyehs instead of white sheets to hide their faces so they can get away with crime and intimidate people.

And eventually, these “protests” turned violent. When 200 rioters swarmed the Barnard College library recently, vandalizing the place and barricading themselves in the building, draping a giant flag calling for “intifada,” the CUAD took credit. When rioters trashed and took over Hamilton Hall in 2024, Khalil represented them as a “negotiator.”  

Let’s remember that simply because these rioters and their leaders, who rarely do the dirty work themselves, are offered immunity by leftist district attorneys like Alvin Bragg doesn’t mean they aren’t engaged in criminality. Everyone in the mob who wrecked Hamilton Hall and attacked a Columbia custodian was let off the hook by Bragg, other than a single 40-something trust-fund baby who was charged with arson, criminal mischief, and hitting a 22-year-old Jewish student in the face with a rock.

During the ’60s and ’70s, thousands of defectors from Warsaw Pact nations came to the U.S. They were grilled about their affiliation with communism by immigration officials. Newcomers were compelled to disavow associations with illiberal movements, and they promised not to engage in any subversive or revolutionary activity. These are completely legitimate things to ask of those seeking citizenship. What kind of nation willingly imports a fifth column?

Then again, most immigrants from Eastern Europe, who risked everything fleeing totalitarian ideologies, had no interest in bringing those ideas with them. Khalil, on the other hand, is importing a violent dogma that is antithetical to the basic tenets of American life. If we can’t deport individual noncitizens who foment Syrian-style turmoil here, perhaps we need to be more judicious about allowing immigration from places where illiberal notions are popular.

After all, we’re constantly being lectured on how being an American isn’t conditional on skin color, faith, or ethnicity but on a set of beliefs. Sometimes, it seems like immigration is the only thing that American progressives admire.

There’s a valid concern about Trump’s edict being a slippery slope. The state will always abuse its power. One day, perhaps someone who doesn’t deserve it will be sent home. None of that changes the reality about Khalil. And as slippery slopes go, it’s far less dangerous for the country than the radicalization of our best universities.  

Who knows? Perhaps the case of Mahmoud Khalil will signal to the next person graciously allowed into this country that acting like Yasser Arafat is unacceptable. Perhaps the Trump administration’s cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia due to the school’s inaction on the “persistent harassment of Jewish students” will motivate universities to stop surrendering to the mob.

PRO-HAMAS FOREIGNERS BETTER PACK THEIR BAGS

Let’s not forget that many of these schools are beneficiaries of billions of dollars from theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, an ally of Hamas. It’s not exactly surprising that these schools allow Jewish students’ civil rights to be undermined, rioters to go unpunished, and fanatic professors to teach students dark fiction about the United States and the Western world. It’s bad enough that petro-sheiks are subsidizing a bunch of entitled American brats. We shouldn’t be bolstering their ranks of foreign revolutionaries.

Will Khalil be deported? Who knows. Due process can take a long time. In the end, though, if we’re a nation that’s compelled to hand citizenship to foreigners who lead groups that hang “Death to America” banners at their protests, we are on a suicide mission.