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Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s push to target and cancel the visas of individual students living in America for participation in protests against the government of Israel.
Rubio deflected questions from CBS’s Margaret Brennan about Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal US permanent resident (green card holder) who was arrested and immediately targeted for deportation last weekend after the Trump administration canceled his visa and arrested him with plainclothes officers at Columbia.
Khalil was a leader in the student protests that developed around campus but was also outspoken against antisemitism.
His arrest has outraged Democrats and civil rights advocates; Khalil is not charged with a crime and did not enter the US illegally. His removal has been temporarily blocked by a judge.
The head of the US State Department would not say, when pressed by Brennan, whether the government would attempt to accuse Khalil with a crime. Instead, he offered a defense of the effort that conceded that visa holders did not have a right to free speech at all.
“When you apply to enter the United States and you get a visa, you are a guest,” Rubio claimed. “If you tell us when you apply for a visa, ‘I’m coming to the U.S. to participate in pro-Hamas events,’ that runs counter to the foreign policy interest of the United States.”
Khalil and other student protest leaders at Columbia and other universities say they have gone to great lengths to include Jewish organizations and students in their movements and spaces; nevertheless, the protests that occurred in late 2023 and throughout 2024 occurred amid a rise in both fake and real instances of anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses.
The deportation of Khalil has even been cheered on by one Democratic senator as the rest of his party warns of the clear curtailment of free speech rights that the case presents for people living in America on various types of visas.
John Fetterman, the loudest and most conservative pro-Israel voice among the Senate Democratic caucus, is reported to have flagged Khalil’s involvement in the protests to federal immigration authorities at the behest of a pro-Israel activist.
