Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and the revocation of his green card are constitutional actions within the powers granted to the federal government.
Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and the revocation of his green card are constitutional actions well within the powers granted to the federal government.
Federal authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, one of the leaders of the pro-Hamas coalition at Columbia University, last weekend on the charge that he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” and posed a threat to national security and foreign policy.
Since that time, politicians and pundits, particularly on the left, have tried to lionize this anti-West terror-supporting radical as some kind of liberal icon and have questioned whether the government has the right to deport someone of his ilk. For the record, of course it does.
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) codified at 8 U.S. Code § 1182 applies to all aliens, meaning “any person not a citizen or national of the United States.” This term includes both visa holders and green card holders like Khalil.
The INA contains a number of activities for which a person can be deemed ineligible based on security and related grounds. The relevant subsection contains nine grounds related to terrorism, the majority of which are not controversial at all: members of terrorist organizations, people engaging in terrorism, etc.
The current debate concerns § 212(a)(3)(b)(i)(vii), which allows for the deportation of any alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.” Some have claimed that deporting someone for these reasons violates the First Amendment. That is incorrect.
The premise of the question rests on the assumption that an alien (even a legal alien) has First Amendment rights that are exactly the same in every situation as the rights of a U.S. national or citizen. That is not the case. As the Supreme Court has made clear, sometimes the government may impose distinctions and conditions.
See, for example, Citizens United v. FEC (2010):
The Government routinely places special restrictions on the speech rights of students, prisoners, members of the Armed Forces, foreigners, and its own employees. When such restrictions are justified by a legitimate governmental interest, they do not necessarily raise constitutional problems. … [T]he constitutional rights of certain categories of speakers, in certain contexts, ‘are not automatically coextensive with the rights’ that are normally accorded to members of our society.
