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Conservative Political Action Conference host Mercedes Schlapp suggested on Tuesday night that the Trump administration should “deport” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) alongside Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, even though Tlaib is an American-born citizen.
Following ICE’s arrest and threatened deportation of Khalil — who is a legal permanent resident of the United States — for helping lead anti-war campus protests against Israel, 14 members of Congress signed a letter demanding Khalil be released. Tlaib, a member of “The Squad” and a Palestinian-American who has been outspoken about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, was one of the signatories.
“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime. As the Trump Administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader and negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University’s campus,” the members of Congress wrote in the letter addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
“Khalil’s constitutional rights have been violated,” the letter added. “He has been denied meaningful access to counsel and any visitation from his family. This is absolutely unacceptable — and illegal.”
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President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has defended the arrest and promised “many more to come” while his administration claims it has the authority to remove Khalil under the Immigration and Nationality Act, even though he has not been charged with any actual crime.
“The secretary of state has the right to revoke a green card or a visa for individuals who serve, or are adversarial to the foreign policy and the national security interests of the United States of America,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. “Mahmoud Khalil was an individual who was given the privilege of coming to this country to study at one of our nation’s finest universities and colleges and he took advantage of that opportunity, of that privilege, by siding with terrorists, Hamas terrorists.”
While Khalil has been transferred to a Louisiana prison facility where he’s being staged for removal, hundreds of demonstrators have taken to the streets of New York to protest his detention. Khalil’s case headed to a Manhattan court on Wednesday, where his lawyers called the arrest “completely unprecedented.”
With MAGA media backing Trump’s attempted deportation of a green card holder over political speech and “threats to national security,” Schlapp went further during an appearance on Newsmax’s primetime panel show The Right Squad by floating the notion of U.S.-born citizens getting sent out of the country for their political positions.
“Speaking of the pro-Hamas — Rashida Tlaib, and who doesn’t talk about our pro-Hamas Rashida Tlaib — she was the lone vote, the only vote against a bill in the House of Representatives yesterday requiring an annual report to Congress on the cross-border cartel smuggling tunnels,” Right Squad host Chris Plante said.
“You know, like the ones under Gaza, but under the border from Mexico to the United States. 402 people voted yes,” he continued. “And Rashida Tlaib was the single no vote, the single no vote when it comes to the tunnels coming from Mexico into the United States smuggling children and adults, human trafficking, fentanyl killing.”
After Plante added that Tlaib is “not on our side,” Schlapp — who is married to CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp and is a former Trump adviser — chimed in to call for the Detroit-born congresswoman to be removed from the country.
“I’m thinking that maybe they should deport Rashida Tlaib as well,” she groused. “Just take her out along with Mahmoud at this point. I mean, it’s just outrageous.”
Schlapp added: “It just shows how she has been someone who has supported terrorists and has been, what I say, not putting America first or Americans first. And I don’t know why they keep sending her back to Congress.”
