The Trump administration sparked obscure legal laws over the weekend in an attempt to deport recent Columbia University graduates and legal permanent residents that led the campus protest against Israel last year, those with knowledge of the action said Monday.
Mahmoud Halil, 30, who graduated from Columbia with a master's degree from the International Public Service School in December, was arrested by a New York immigration officer on Saturday and sent to a Louisiana detention center. Harill, who has a Palestinian heritage, has a green card and is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.
President Trump said Halil's case was “the first arrest of many people going forward.”
“We know that Columbia and other universities that are engaged in counterterrorism, anti-Semitism and anti-American activities that the Trump administration will not tolerate it,” Trump told social media on Monday.
“If you support terrorism, including the massacre of innocent men, women and children, your presence is against our national and foreign policy interests and you are not welcome here. We expect that all American universities and universities will follow,” he added.
Immigration and customs enforcement, or the ice-based attempt to arrest and expel Halil has sparked vigilance over the right to free voice and the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration and the escalating crackdown on universities as claimed by Trump and his aides.
The administration did not publicly lay out legal authority for arrest. But two people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations said Secretary of State Marco Rubio relied on the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives him drastic power to expel foreigners.
The provision states that “aliens whose presence or activity in the United States has a reasonable basis for the Secretary of State to believe that the impact of a potentially serious, unfavorable foreign policy is potentially significant.”
Rubio also reposted a statement from the Department of Homeland Security, which accused Halil of “leading activities along Hamas.” However, authorities have not accused him of contacting the terrorist group, then taking instructions and providing material support.
Rather, the rationale is that the protests that the anti-Israel supported Halil were anti-Semitic and fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students in Columbia. Rubio's argument is that the United States has a foreign policy of fighting anti-Semitism around the world and undermines the purpose of this policy of tolerating Khalil's continued presence in the United States.
“We haven't seen anything like this as long as I'm a lawyer I practice,” said Robin Bernard, the first human rights immigration lawyer. “It is truly deeply concerning that the US government will use limited resources on immigration law enforcement to target people whose speeches disagree but otherwise appear not to violate our initial amendments.”
Trump has taken steps to curb protests and other activities on campus, where officials in his administration consider anti-Israel or anti-Semitics and often think they are confusing the two. On Friday, the Trump administration announced it would cancel its $400 million grant and contract with Columbia, citing “continued omissions at schools in the face of permanent harassment of Jewish students.”
Halil, a Colombian student, was the leader of the campus protests after Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and luring around 250 people. Israeli forces took a strike in Gaza, which killed nearly 50,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities there.
The university administration's response, including pro-Palestinian protests in Colombia and student camps, as well as asking police to clean up protesters, has become a lightning bolt of national debate over public criticism of Israel. Some protesters adopted slogans like “globalization of intifadas” and called for the release of Palestine “from rivers to seas.” This is a phrase that has fundamentally different interpretations by Israelis and Palestinians, leading to accusations of anti-Semitism.
The State Department declined to comment Monday. The Department of Homeland Security introduced the questions to the Department of State.
During the 2024 presidential election, Trump previewed that he intended to expel foreign students who participated in anti-Israel protests as part of a broader plan for a radical crackdown on immigration. He generally framed the plan in terms of canceling student visas, but does not expel legitimate permanent residents.
Legal permanent residents or green card holders are protected by the Constitution. This includes the right to free speech in the First Amendment and the right to mandate in the Fifth Amendment. The Trump administration's attempt to expel Khalil under that statutory clause is highly likely to face constitutional challenges, some legal experts said.
Amy Belsher, director of the Immigration Rights Litigation Office for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said he could not recall previous cases in which the Secretary of State issued the Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA, since Congress enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA, in 1952.
“It's an escalation,” she said. “This provision has not been historically invoked and is incredibly vague and will raise real concerns about the weaponization of the INA to eliminate those the administration disagrees with.”
As previous uses of the clauses appeared to have been rare at best, legal experts had sorted procedural implications, such as whether an immigration judge should officially cancel Mr. Halil's green card and issue a final deletion order.
It was also not clear whether Halil's lawyers would delay his ability to pursue constitutional agendas in federal courts if administrative removal procedures were the first step required. Mr. Halil's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
It was also not clear whether he was arrested or in Louisiana would result in legal challenges to his detention and deportation procedures. The Court of Appeals overseeing federal judicial procedures in Louisiana is particularly conservative.
At a rally in Iowa on October 16, 2023, Trump declared: They are teaching your kids hate. “He added: “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the university's radical, anti-American, anti-Semitic foreign student visas.
In a speech in Las Vegas on October 28th, Trump said, “We will end visas for all Hamas sympathizers, we will leave the city and leave the city, and remove hell from our country.” And at a stop for the November 8 campaign in Florida, he said “quickly cancel student visas for all Hamas sympathizers on campus of radicalism-invased colleges.”
On Monday, Rubio met with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, partially meeting to discuss efforts to end the war in Gaza. As a Republican senator representing Florida, Rubio is a supporter of Israel's voice in the war, telling protesters who stand up to him in Congress that Hamas' “vicious animals” is to condemn all the devastation and civilian deaths from Israeli forces' attacks in Gaza.
Julian E. Burns Reported contributions from Washington.
