On March 8, 2025, officials with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) arrested, detained and attempted to revoke the student visa and green card of Mahmoud Khalil.
Khalil, who has an American wife who was expecting a child, had become the face of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University calling for divestment of businesses in Israel during Israel’s war with Gaza, which started after Gaza, led by Hamas militants, attacked Israel.
The government argued that Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which provided that “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,” gave it sufficient authority to deport Khalil.
Khalil filed a lawsuit, arguing that as a legal resident alien, he retained First Amendment rights of expression and Fifth Amendment rights to due process.
First Amendment Rights of Resident Aliens
After Khalil petitioned a U.S. District Court in New York, where Khalil had been arrested, the court enjoined the government from removing Khalil from the country without a hearing.
The Trump Administration argues that Khalil has been engaged in anti-Zionist activities and that he is therefore tied to Hamas and terrorism, but it did not initially provide specific evidence that Khalil actually advocated violence or provided any aid to Hamas.
As it held Khalil in custody, the Trump Administration transferred Khalil first to New Jersey and then to Louisiana. The government argued that the habeas corpus petition that Khalil had filed in a New York District Court should be vacated or that the case should be transferred to a court in Louisiana where Khalil was being held.
On March 19, 2025, Judge Jesse M. Furman, of the New York Court rejected the argument to dismiss Khalil’s petition in Khalil v. Joyce [Joyce is the Acting Field Office Director of the New York Field Office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)]. He based this decision in part on the argument that invaliding the petition might have enabled the government to deport Khalil immediately before his rights could be considered.
The court further offered three reasons why the case should be sent to the neighboring New Jersey court, where, unbeknownst to his attorney, the government was holding Khalil when he filed his initial habeas corpus petition, rather than, as the government had argued, to the district in Louisiana where Khalil was being detained. The judge argued that the New Jersey court would be likely to resolve the case more expeditiously, that moving the proceedings to Louisiana would prejudice Khalil’s case by moving it so far away from the place where he was arrested and his family resided, and that Khalil’s lawyer had filed his petition “based on a good-faith and reasonable belief that he was then detained there” when he filed it.
Government says Khalil withheld that he had worked for British Embassy, UN
As Khalil’s case awaits resolution, the government has shifted its focus from charges that he was tied to Hamas and terrorism to charges that he had “sought to procure an immigration benefit by fraud of willful misrepresentation of a material fact.”
Specifically, it charges that in applying for his green card, Khalil failed to mention that he had worked for the Syria office of the British Embassy in Beirut and that he had been a member of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which Israel has accused of being antisemitic. Not surprisingly, Khalil’s attorney cites the government’s new argument as “a recognition that the initial charges are unsustainable” (Rose, Pazmino, and Souza, 2025).
Other immigrants targeted after critical speech or associations
The Trump Administration’s arrest of Khalil comes at a time amid several other developments in immigration practices. In March 2025, U.S. immigration officials denied entry to an unnamed French scientist who was planning to attend a conference near Houston. It did so after finding messages on his phone critical of the Trump Administration, although the government has since asserted that it did so because he had “confidential” information from a U.S. laboratory.
That same month, the U.S. deported Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese doctor with a visa after she was discovered to have photos on her phone indicating that she had attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, a Hezbollah leader.
The government also revoked the visa of Badar Khan Suri, a native of India who was doing research at Georgetown University, apparently because he and his wife, a Palestinian who is a U.S. citizen, have opposed U.S. policies toward Israel.
In an action less related to the First Amendment, the government deported more than 200 Venezuelan nationals to prisons in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act in apparent contradiction to an order by D.C. Chief District Judge James Boasberg telling it not to do so. In that case the government, claiming that the nation was facing an invasion by violent Venezuelan gang members, claimed to be acting under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the specific language of which applied in cases of “a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation of government,” neither of which appeared to be present in this case (Vile 2016, 49).
Birthright Citizenship
These events have occurring at a time when Trump is also questioning long-reigning doctrine of birthright citizenship for those who are born to undocumented individuals. This understanding, based on the language of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment (“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”) and affirmed in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), provides that individuals born in the United States, even to undocumented aliens, are citizens, with rights of due process and equal protection of the laws.
Even if Trump’s attempt to expel legal immigrants for their political stance, some believe his attempt to deport Khalil and other alien residents could have a chilling effect on the exercise of First Amendment rights of expression by non-citizens.
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.