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Six weeks into the second Trump administration, and days after President Trump vowed to push back on “illegal protests” on college campuses, the State Department has pulled the first visa of a foreign student disruptor, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a legal permanent resident (green-card holder) who engaged in pro-Hamas college chaos.
That’s the right thing to do if we want to fix campus culture. And contrary to misinformed or disingenuous critics, it poses no First Amendment problems.
After ICE agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, Democrat backlash followed.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee posted “Free Mahmoud Khalil” on X. DNC vice-chair David Hogg said it was “one more step in Trump’s authoritarian march, detaining Palestinian . . . Mahmoud Khalil.”
Not only is Khalil Syrian, not “Palestinian,” the Democrats are wrong about both the principle and the application of the law in this case.
Indeed, it’s a basic application of US immigration law, which says that people here on a visa (tourist, student, employment, or otherwise) who reveal themselves to be ineligible for that visa — “inadmissible,” in the parlance of the Immigration and Nationality Act — can have their visa revoked.
Even President Biden’s State Department once told then-Sen. Marco Rubio that it could revoke the visas of Hamas supporters.
Holders of temporary visas, like students, who are deemed ineligible generally do not get a hearing or anything beyond an administrative order that can’t be challenged.
Green card holders like Khalil, on the other hand, are entitled to appear before an immigration judge, who must determine that the government has met the burden of proof to make the person “deportable.”
There is no doubt that the pro-Hamas protests on college campuses across the country are detrimental to the foreign policy goals of America, which include protecting the state of Israel, one of America’s closest allies.
In Khalil’s case, we don’t know the details of the due process he’s been given, such as the serving of a notice to appear in front of an immigration judge. But one thing is clear: the executive branch has the authority to vet noncitizens based on their views, thanks to the laws Congress has passed and the Supreme Court has upheld.
While the relevant INA provisions could potentially be abused, there is no evidence of abuse in these cases so far. Rather, they are being applied selectively and in furtherance of the national interest.
But that’s not all Trump can do: The INA’s inadmissibility provision also empowers the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whom he determines to be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
During Trump’s first term, the Supreme Court upheld that broad grant of presidential discretion to vet, restrict and even ban immigrants — and thus to direct executive-agency action in that regard — at the culmination of the high-profile “travel ban” litigation.
In Trump v. Hawaii, the court OK’d an executive order restricting travel from various countries, with Chief Justice John Roberts affirming that the only statutory requirement is that the president “find” the entry of the affected aliens to be “detrimental to the national interest.”
That’s exactly what’s happening now.
In one of the first executive orders Trump signed this year, he directed federal agencies to strengthen vetting and screening of those seeking admission and those already in the country, because “the United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”
Then, as part of his “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” EO, he ordered the use of “all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”
All of this makes eminent sense: It’s the government’s duty to screen out visitors and migrants who would be harmful to our country, including those who reject our values or are hostile to our way of life, such as Communists, Nazis, or Islamists.
When immigrants apply for legal permanent residency or naturalization, they must affirm that they aren’t affiliated with these groups “or any other totalitarian party.”
To give another example in a different context, 1,000 Chinese nationals had their visas revoked in 2020 for being national security risks — and the Biden administration successfully defended that Trump action in court.
While the government can’t send noncitizens to jail for saying things it doesn’t like, it can and should deny or pull visas for those who advocate for causes inimical to the United States.
There’s nothing objectionable or controversial about removing those who harass, intimidate, vandalize, and otherwise interfere with an educational institution’s core mission. More, please.
Ilya Shapiro is the director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, where Daniel Di Martino is a fellow. Both are immigrants. Adapted from City Journal.