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The Trump administration and all patriotic Americans won a big victory recently when a judge ruled that pro-Hamas agitator Mahmoud Khalil, who has become the latest hater of America to become a darling of the left, can lawfully be deported.

It was a classic case of the leftist media giving the public a false impression, and of a judge, along with that same media, once again underestimating the Trump administration. The establishment media has been hysterically insisting for weeks now that Khalil was in danger in being deported solely because he expressed views that Trump and his administration disliked. Leftist propagandists — that is, the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and the rest — have been claiming that Khalil is the victim of a dictator-in-the-making who wants to destroy the freedom of speech.

And so, Judge Jamee E. Comans, a Louisiana immigration judge, peremptorily gave the federal government exactly 24 hours to provide her with its evidence against Khalil. If she deemed this evidence to be insufficient, she said, “then I am going to terminate the case on Friday.” Marc Van Der Hout, one of Khalil’s large army of attorneys, claimed that “the government has not produced a single shred of evidence to date to support any of its allegations or charges in this case including its outrageous position that Mahmoud’s mere presence and activities in this country have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

After seeing the evidence that the government provided, however, on Friday, Comans did not terminate the case against Khalil. Instead, she ruled that Khalil could indeed be deported. The Associated Press reported that Comans “said at the conclusion of a hearing in Jena that the government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the United States posed ‘potentially serious foreign policy consequences’ was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation. Comans said the government had ‘established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.’”

As you no doubt expect, this isn’t the end of the matter: “Lawyers for Khalil are expected to appeal. And a federal judge in New Jersey has temporarily barred Khalil’s removal from the country.” Nonetheless, the fact that Comans ruled in the administration’s favor is a massive triumph for Trump in his efforts to restore sanity to immigration policy and remove from the country all those who take advantage of America’s hospitality and generosity to work against its interests.

Khalil, according to AP, “isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The government, however, has said that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country for expressing views that the administration considers to be antisemitic and ‘pro-Hamas,’ referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.”

This is actually quite clear in American law regarding green card holders such as Mahmoud Khalil. U.S. Code § 1182states 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 on March 10 as one of the “student leaders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD). The Washington Post reported on March 18 that “No one disputes that Khalil was the face of Columbia University Apartheid Divest.”

In Aug. 2024, CUAD posted this on Instagram, then removed it once it started getting noticed among the sane: “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” Also, during the anti-Israel protests at Columbia, the demonstrators screamed“Death to America.”

Khalil’s case thus should have been a simple, open-and-shut affair, were it not for the fact that it became useful to the left in its efforts to hamstring Trump’s efforts to halt and reverse their open-borders, bring-the-whole-world-here policies. Because Khalil was a campus agitator at Columbia University, his case offered the left the added benefit of being plausibly, albeit not quite accurately, described as based solely on the opinions he expressed. As such, it became a key weapon in efforts to portray Trump as a would-be dictator who was trampling upon the Constitution and destroying the freedom of speech.

There are, however, actual differences in how American law applies to citizens and to non-citizens. In a memo submitted to the court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows for the deportation of foreigners whose presence in this country “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The law allows for the deportation of people who, by being on American soil, would “compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.” Rubio explains that Khalil’s continued agitation at Columbia would “undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.

When the administration began its efforts to deport Khalil, President Trump 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. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”

The deportation of Mahmoud Khalil is a good beginning. May there be many more like it.