Campus Agitator Turns to the Supreme Court

The refusal of a federal circuit court to grant another hearing in the deportation case of an anti-Israel activist, Mahmoud Khalil, means that in the dispute the Supreme Court could be the tribunal of last resort. President Trump is aiming to expel Mr. Khalil as part of a broader purge of foreign agitators who are fomenting hate on our campuses. While Mr. Khalil claims a First Amendment right to his pro-Hamas activism, his case has failed to prosper in the courts.The understanding of why that might be has, in our view, been best articulated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Mr. Khalil, an Algerian citizen, first came to America under a student visa granted during the Biden administration. The activist subsequently became a permanent resident. Yet speaking more generally of the privilege America grants to foreigners to study here, Mr. Rubio asserted, “No one’s entitled to a student visa.” Even so, the secretary added, “the press covers student visas like they’re some sort of birthright.” He compared the grant of a student visa to “inviting you into my home. If you come into my home and put all kinds of crap on my couch, I’m going to kick you out of my house.” Plus, too, Mr. Rubio said, “if you come to this country as a student, we expect you to go to class and study and get a degree.”Yet academic study seems to get short shrift among many of the far-left agitators populating America’s campuses, Mr. Rubio lamented. “If you come here to, like, vandalize a library, take over a campus, and do all kinds of crazy things, you know, we’re going to get rid of these people,” he averred, and “when we identify lunatics like these, we take away their student visa.” To that end, hundreds of student visas have been revoked by the State Department.Mr. Khalil’s deportation was based on provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The law permits non-citizens to be deported if the secretary of state “has reasonable ground to believe that the alien’s presence” in the country “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” Mr. Rubio has pointed to Mr. Khalil’s role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities.” These disturbances, Mr. Rubio has stated, create “a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States,” which traverses the national interest. An immigration judge last year agreed with Mr. Rubio’s finding and ruled that Mr. Khalil could be deported. Since then, though, Mr. Khalil has been in a legal fight to stave off expulsion. The dispute has run on two tracks — executive branch immigration courts and Article III tribunals. Immigration Courts have vindicated Mr. Rubio’s position, with the Board of Immigration Appeals rejecting Mr. Khalil’s attempts to stay in America. The riders of the Third Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, too, overruled a district judge’s attempt to halt Mr. Khalil’s deportation. A panel of Third Circuit riders in January held that the immigration courts were the proper venue for Mr. Khalil to pursue his legal case for avoiding deportation.Today, the entire bench of the Third Circuit declined to hear Mr. Khalil’s appeal of the panel’s decision. Dissenters on the appellate bench argued that refusing to weigh Mr. Khalil’s argument of due process violations amounted to “abdicating our duty to meaningfully review Khalil’s constitutional claims.” The American Civil Liberties Union vows to take the case to the Supreme Court. Yet the logic of Mr. Rubio’s argument could be hard to surmount.

Campus Agitator Turns to the Supreme Court

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