Even far-right commentator Ann Coulter seems uneasy with the Trump administration’s plans to deport a green card holder for leading pro-Palestine protests.
The 63-year-old wondered out loud whether the government was violating the First Amendment—the right to free speech—by arresting Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian who led pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University last year.
“There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the first amendment?” Coulter said in a post on X.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Khalil inside his university-owned home on Saturday night, according to his lawyer, Amy Greer.
President Donald Trump personally confirmed the arrest in a post on Truth Social, describing Khalil as “a radical foreign pro-Hamas student.”
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” the president wrote. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”
Trump echoed Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement that the government will deport even people who are in the United States legally.
“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” Rubio said in a post on X.
However, Kelli Stump, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told NPR that only an immigration judge can revoke a green card: “The government bears the burden of proving the reason that this person is deportable from the United States. And then just depending on what ground we’re looking at, that’s where the fight ensues.”
On Monday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman blocked Khalil’s removal from the U.S. to consider a habeas corpus petition filed by his lawyer.
