On March 8, ICE arrested Palestinian activist and recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil after the Trump administration revoked his green card for allegedly engaging in activities that supported Hamas, a designated terrorist group. Khalil was a leader in Columbia’s pro-Palestinian protests last spring.
He was destined for deportation, but yesterday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman issued an order blocking his deportation. Khalil is currently detained in a Louisiana ICE facility awaiting his fate, which could take months to sort out.
The incident has sparked widespread controversy. Of course, the left is outraged. That’s a given. But so are facets of the right, including Candace Owens and Glenn Greenwald, who are speaking out against Khalil’s deportation on the premise that he hasn’t engaged in violence and that his free speech is being violated.
Liz Wheeler of “The Liz Wheeler Show” breaks it all down and explains why Khalil’s deportation is absolutely necessary.
If we want to stop “the crisis of mass immigration that is harming our country,” that means “not just securing our border but protecting our culture from those who hate America,” she says.
On “October 7, 2023, when Hamas brutally raided, invaded, raped, murdered, brutalized Israelis and Jews …there were protests that cropped up not just in the Middle East but here in America in favor of what Hamas did.”
One of those protests occurred at Columbia University, where protesters, defying university rules, “occupied buildings” for days until NYC police finally had to evict them.
Khalil was “reportedly the chief negotiator between the protesters and the campus administrators.”
He even “articulated to the media the demands that these students had for the administration … before they would agree to end their occupation of the building,” says Liz.
She then plays a video clip of Khalil telling CNN that the students would continue to defy university rules by occupying the Hamilton building until the university agreed to the BDS movement — the boycott, divest, and sanction Israel movement.
“Are you guys going to listen to the university and leave the encampment here?” a reporter asked.
“Of course not. The university is the one who should listen to us. … Our demands are clear. Our demands are regarding the divestment from the Israeli occupation, the companies that are profiting and contributing to the genocide of our people,” Khalil stated, before telling the reporter that they would “go as far as [they needed] to pressure the university.”
“That’s a dangerous thing to say … because it insinuates that he’d be willing to escalate to the point of violence,” says Liz, “and we know that he would be willing to escalate to the point of violence because of the group that he’s involved in.”
The group Liz refers to is called Columbia United Apartheid Divest.
“This group calls for the total eradication of the West,” Liz explains, calling the organization “as extreme as it gets.”
CUAD’s X account features the following statement: “In the face of violence from the oppressor equipped with the most lethal military force on the planet, where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”
Further, in a since-deleted Instagram post, the organization stated the following: “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the global South. Our intifada is an internationalist one. We are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people. As the fascism ingrained in the American consciousness becomes ever more explicit and irrefutable, we seek community and instruction from militants in the global South who have been on the front lines in the fight against tyranny and domination, which undergird the imperialist world order.”
Mahmoud, therefore, is “not just being a protester against the so-called war in Gaza; he is now anti-West, which means that he is anti-American,” she continues.
If his membership and activism in CUAD is “not a direct tie to terrorism … then what is?” she asks.
To hear more of Liz’s argument, watch the episode above.
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