(NewsNation) — The potential deportation of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil has alarmed free-speech advocates, including New York mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani.
He was recently seen on social media videos shouting angrily at “border czar” Tom Homan in Albany, demanding to know if the immigration enforcer believes in the First Amendment.
“He was walking the halls, with a smirk on his face, without any answer for the unjustifiable, which is the detention of a permanent, legal resident of this country, a fellow New Yorker, without any actual charge,” Khalil, a Democratic state legislator, told “NewsNation Prime” on Sunday.
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Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Khalil on March 8. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the green card holder is no longer welcome in the U.S. because of Khalil’s role in disruptive pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, which some have seen as antisemitic and supportive of the terrorist organization Hamas.
“They haven’t actually been able to prove any of those allegations,” Mamdani, the mayoral candidate, said. “They are simply making them now because they understand the very shaky legal footing that they are on, having ‘disappeared’ a permanent legal resident of this country, purely for political speech.”
Republican strategist Matt Klink begs to differ.
“Mr. Khalil, he’s a guest in this country,” he said. “He can’t come out and do what he has been doing at Columbia, and the administration is well within its rights. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio can withdraw his green card, which he did, and at that point, he goes back to wherever he came from.”
The 30-year-old Khalil, a Palestinian originally from Syria, is reportedly being detained at an ICE detention center in Louisiana while his potential removal from the U.S. is argued in court.
