Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University anti-Israel activist whom the Trump administration has targeted for deportation, has become a darling of the left, as people who hate America so often do. The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) claimed Friday that Khalil’s arrest “has created a speech-chilling atmosphere of fear,” and charges that “the Trump administration’s actions represent a dangerous escalation of the president’s attempts to choke off the free speech rights of people on American soil.” And on Sunday, Khalil’s wife attempted to blow up the entire case against him, asserting that it was “ridiculous” and “disgusting” to say that Khalil supports Hamas.
This is all-important, because if Khalil is found to be a Hamas supporter, the case against him would be nearly open-and-shut. U.S. Code § 1182 states that “any alien” who is “a representative” of “a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity” is “inadmissible.” U.S. Code § 1227 adds that such an alien “is deportable.” The Associated Press described Khalil two weeks ago as one of the “student leaders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD). The Washington Post reported last Tuesday that “No one disputes that Khalil was the face of Columbia University Apartheid Divest.”
Khalil was CUAD’s chief negotiator with Columbia administrators. Politico explained: “Khalil was a lead negotiator representing the student protesters to the Columbia administration during the school’s ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ last spring. The student group behind the encampment — Columbia University Apartheid Divest, or CUAD — had two main demands: that Columbia cut all its ties to Israel, including divesting and halting plans to build a ‘global center’ in Tel Aviv, and that the protesters themselves receive amnesty for their actions.”
However, apparently aware of how damaging that fact is to his case, Khalil himself disputes this. The BBC framed Khalil’s connection to CUAD as if it were merely something his opponents claimed: “Activists supporting Israel have accused Mr Khalil of being a leader of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (Cuad), a student group that demanded, among other things, the university to divest from its financial ties to Israel and a ceasefire in Gaza. Mr Khalil has denied that he led the group, telling the Associated Press (AP) that he only served as a spokesperson for protesters and as a mediator with the university.”
It’s easy to see why Khalil would want to distance himself from CUAD. In August 2024, it posted this on Instagram, then removed it once it started getting appalled notice from saner quarters: “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” During the anti-Israel protests at Columbia, the demonstrators screamed “Death to America.”
And as for Hamas, Fox News reported that “On October 9, 2024, The New York Times reported CUAD marked the anniversary of Hamas slaughtering over 1,200 Israeli civilians by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for the mass murder: ‘One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory.’ The group posted an essay calling the attack a ‘moral, military and political victory’ and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.”
If that isn’t support for Hamas, what is? And so the Trump administration is trying to deport Khalil, as a leader of CUAD, for being a representative of a group that espouses terror activity. Unless Khalil can successfully distance himself from CUAD or from its support for Hamas, which seems unlikely, he will be deported, no matter how many lawyers moneyed leftists hire for him.
That’s why Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, is now saying: “I think it’s ridiculous. It’s disgusting … that that’s the tactic that they’re using to make him look like this person that he’s not, literally.” What’s really ridiculous is that despite the abundance of evidence linking Khalil to CUAD and CUAD to support for Hamas, there will still be leftists who fall for this.
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If his case drags on for long enough, Mahmoud Khalil has a shot at becoming the new Alger Hiss. Hiss was a Communist spy in FDR’s State Department, and even Secretary-General of the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization, where the UN’s Charter was drafted. In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a fellow spy who had a change of heart, named Hiss as one of the Communist spies with whom he had worked. Hiss was ultimately convicted of perjury (the statute of limitations on espionage charges had run out), but leftists stoutly maintained his innocence right up until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. After that, Soviet files confirmed that he had been one of their boys all along.
Mahmoud Khalil’s hatred for America is easier to establish. That’s why leftists love him so much. They love antisemites, too, as “Antisemitism: History and Myth” explains. And if Noor Abdalla’s gambit succeeds, they’ll be able to shed tears over his persecution at the hands of Trump for years to come.
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