News/Commentary

DOJ reveals REAL reason pro-Hamas Columbia U agitator Mahmoud Khalil is getting booted from US

March 25, 2025 | | Print Article

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has alleged that detained green card holder Mahmoud Khalil lied on his permanent residency application.

Khalil is a pro-Hamas Columbia University graduate who served as a leader and negotiator during the school’s pro-Hamas “protests” last spring. He was detained for deportation earlier this month on the basis that he’s been promoting terrorism.

His detainment sparked outrage from leftists who claimed his supposed free speech rights (he’s not yet a citizen) were being targeted. The Trump DOJ responded to this argument by submitting a filing on Sunday containing new accusations against Khalil.

The new accusations are that he failed to disclose on his permanent residency application that he’d previously worked for the Syria office of the British Embassy in Beirut and that he was a member of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, aka UNRWA.

UNRWA has been directly linked to terrorism.

“The relief agency was infamously stripped of tens of millions of dollars in federal funding after Israel claimed that 12 of its members took part in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel,” according to Fox News.

The fact that Khalil “lied” about his membership by not disclosing it is grounds enough for his deportation, the DOJ said in a statement.

“Regardless of his allegations concerning political speech, Khalil withheld membership in certain organizations and failed to disclose continuing employment by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut when he submitted his adjustment of status application,” the statement reads.

“It is black-letter law that misrepresentations in this context are not protected speech. Thus, Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring, and there is an independent basis to justify removal sufficient to foreclose Khalil’s constitutional claim here,” the statement concludes.

According to Fox News, Khalil is a Syrian native and Algerian citizen who entered the United States with a student visa in 2022. Two years later,  he filed paperwork to become a permanent resident.

President Donald Trump had for his part warned in a fact sheet published earlier this year that pro-terror aliens would be a target.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” he said. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

In a statement made to CNN, Khalil’s attorneys said the DOJ’s latest claim against their client is weak.

“We’re not at all surprised because it’s a recognition that the initial charges are unsustainable,” attorney Baher Azmy said. “So, they’re going with a theory that they must think is more legally defensible. But I just think this doesn’t cure the obvious taint of retaliation.”

His attorneys reportedly plan to file a response by Tuesday.

In a letter to the court previously submitted by his attorneys, Khalil claimed that he’s a “political prisoner.”

“My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner,” he wrote. “I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.”

“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom,” he added.

Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles