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Fox News facing backlash for publishing op-ed on free speech from pro-Hamas Mahmoud Khalil

March 12, 2026 | | Print Article

Fox News is facing heavy backlash for platforming pro-Hamas Islamist Mahmoud Khalil to write a column about free speech.

After the horrific Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel, then-Columbia University student Khalil began protesting on campus on behalf of Hamas, prompting the Trump administration to try to get him deported.

He was just “recently” released from federal custody this past June after a judge ruled in his favor.

In his op-ed for Fox News, he wrote about his time behind bars.

“Throughout my 104 days in federal detention, during which I missed the birth of my first child, I considered myself a political prisoner,” he revealed. “The government had deprived me of my liberty, not because I had broken any laws, but because it didn’t like what I had to say.”

“I was not alone. Other students and scholars with valid immigration status were similarly targeted for detention and deportation despite having committed no crime. They were pulled off the streets by masked agents, targeted outside of their homes, and tricked into arrests during citizenship appointments,” he added.

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Khalil went on to write that the First Amendment was designed explicitly to “prevent” this type of alleged abuse.

“The Supreme Court recognized eighty years ago that the First Amendment protects all of us in the United States — citizens and noncitizens alike — from government persecution for our beliefs,” he wrote.

“If we allow that boundary to be violated for noncitizens, or when the government claims a foreign policy concern, a precedent is created that can be used against all of us. Even citizens. Even people who disagree with me vehemently about Palestine,” he continued.

Khalil is supported by the likes of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a fellow Islamist who recently invited him to dinner.

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To hear Khalil tell it, what happened to him could happen to any American — even those not actively rooting for Islamic terrorists.

“The government has argued that federal courts must let people sit in immigration detention for months or years before reviewing allegations of constitutional violation,” he wrote. “They have argued that Pro-Palestine speech constitutes a foreign policy threat.”

“They have argued that I deserve to be deported because they dislike my ideas. If they can do this to a lawful permanent resident with a U.S. citizen wife and newborn U.S. citizen child, there’s no telling who else they will come for,” he added.

But critics say Khalil is delusional.

“Every thing this guy states is completely wrong,” one critic wrote at FoxNews.com. “It doesn’t matter if you have a green card. If you support a terrorist state that has committed genocide against another county. You break the agreement of having a green card. It is forfeited and you will be deported. My wife is a green card holder we both know the rules.”

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Other critics, particularly those on the social media platform X, bashed Fox News for platforming him in the first place:

Notice how the latter X user called Fox News “controlled opposition.”

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The final batch of critics argued that nothing that happened to Khalil will ever happen to them because they’re not terrorist supporters who hate America:

Vivek Saxena
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