Hailstorm Visuals/Sipa USA via AP Images
Protesters gathered at Foley Square in New York, March 12, 2025, to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist recently arrested by federal immigration agents.
If we’re going to deport immigrants who came here legally because they endangered our national security, I don’t see how we can toss Mahmoud Khalil out of the country. However much his advocacy of Palestine and Hamas may infuriate many Americans and the current administration, the government hasn’t produced a single syllable showing how Khalil’s conduct impaired American security.
Under the administration’s stated criteria for sending back immigrants whence they came, one immigrant who eminently deserves deportation springs to mind. That would be Elon Musk, who just in the past month fired the federal workers who kept our nuclear arsenal secure. If that’s not endangering our national security, I don’t know what is. Any administration genuinely concerned about our citizenry’s survival would be rigging a slow boat to South Africa for Elon right now.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sought to elucidate the justifications for Khalil’s pending deportation. In one tweet, he said the green cards of Hamas supporters in the U.S. will be revoked “so they can be deported.” Speaking to the press, he also cited the campus disruptions in which Khalil was involved, saying students and professors are “afraid to go to class because these lunatics are running around with covers on their face, screaming terrifying things.”
How many legal immigrants would have been deported during other presidencies if these had been the guidelines for deportation then? What of the supporters of the Irish Republican Army when it was waging its violent campaigns, which involved acts of terrorism, in Ireland? There were numerous Irish immigrants, including men and women of wealth and power here in the states, who provided funds and sometimes weapons to the IRA. I don’t recall any high-profile deportations of Irish American businessmen or labor leaders or, heaven forfend, church officials who sought to help the IRA. Nor do I recall any deportations of the German Marxists—including some of Marx’s closest comrades—who came here in the aftermath of the European revolutions of 1848. (A few years later, some of them helped a new political party—the Republicans—get off the ground.)
As to disruptive immigrants, there were many thousands who worked on our railroads or in industrial sweatshops who went on strike in the late 19th and early 20th century, in clashes to which the government responded by sending in the Army. Repression was the order of the day; mass deportations were not.
In any event, Khalil isn’t accused of any crime; he’s merely been targeted because of his stated beliefs. To the extent that those beliefs encompass not just support for a Palestinian state but also support for Hamas, that crosses a line that I consider completely unjustifiable, but millions of Americans hold other beliefs I also consider unjustifiable. The reason we’re all still here is that our Constitution ensures our right to hold and advocate for our beliefs, as distinct from committing violent acts. If immigrants throughout our history had been sent back to their homelands because our government didn’t like their beliefs, we would be living in a radically smaller country—assuming that we were living here at all.
