Rubio says revocation of Mahmoud Khalil green card ‘not about free speech’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the detention and possible deportation of former Columbia University protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil, as critics claim it goes against the First Amendment.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday at Shannon Airport in Ireland, Rubio said that the issue is “not about free speech.” Rubio discussed the situation during a refueling stop en route to the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting in Canada after conducting negotiations on the Ukraine war in Saudi Arabia.

A federal judge in Manhattan later Wednesday morning is expected to consider arguments from Khalil’s lawyers challenging the Trump administration’s revocation of his green card. 

“When you come to the United States as a visitor, which is what a visa is – which is how this individual entered this country, on a visitor’s visa – as a visitor, we can deny you that visa,” Rubio said. “When you tell us when you apply, ‘Hi, I’m trying to get into the United States on a student visa. I am a big supporter of Hamas, a murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that rapes teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that returns more bodies than live hostages,’ if you tell us that you are in favor of a group like this and if you tell us when you apply for your visa, ‘and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, antisemitic activities, I intend to shut down your universities,’ if you told us all these things when you applied for your visa, we would deny your visa. I’d hope we would.” 

WHITE HOUSE: RUBIO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REVOKE GREEN CARD OR VISA OF ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVIST MAHMOUD KHALIL

“If you actually end up doing that once you’re in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it, and if you end up having a green card, not citizenship, but a green card as a result of that visa while you’re here doing those activities, we’re going to kick you out. It’s as simple as that. This is not about free speech,” Rubio said. “This is about people who do not have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a greed card by the way.” 

“So when you apply for a student visa or any visa to enter the United States, we have a right to deny you for virtually any reason, but I think being a supporter of Hamas and coming into our universities and turning them upside down, being complicit in what are clearly crimes, vandalization, complicit in shutting down institutions,” Rubio added. “There are kids at these schools that can’t go to class. You pay all this money to these high-priced schools that are supposed to be of great esteem, and you can’t even go to class. You’re afraid to go to class because there are lunatics running around with covers on their faces screaming terrifying things. If you told us that’s what you intended to do when you came to America, we would have never let you in. And if you do it once you get in, we’re going to revoke it and kick you out.” 

Federal immigration authorities arrested Khalil at his university-owned apartment in New York on Saturday, and he was transported to a detention center in Louisiana. A student organizer during last year’s anti-Israel protests, Khalil was born in Syria to Palestinian parents and was granted a student visa to enter the U.S. to attend Columbia in 2022. He has since obtained a green card and is married to an American citizen who is reportedly eight months pregnant. 

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York on Monday temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation as the case plays out. His attorneys argue that his constitutional rights of free speech and due process under the First and Fifth amendments were violated and filed a motion challenging the validity of Khalil’s detention. They are pushing for Khalil to be returned to New York, while Trump administration lawyers say they intend to file a motion to dismiss or transfer the case out of the Southern District of New York by Wednesday night. They say the Manhattan federal court is “an improper venue.” 

A federal judge in Manhattan later Wednesday morning is expected to consider arguments from Khalil’s lawyers challenging the Trump administration’s revocation of his green card. 

Sources tell Fox News that Khalil is being investigated as a potential national security threat. State Department officials say Khalil’s activities in the U.S. would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”  

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday the Immigration and Nationality Act gives Rubio the right to revoke a green card or visa from an individual considered “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America,” and that Khalil “took advantage” of the privilege of coming to the United States to study at one of America’s finest institutions “by siding with terrorists, Hamas terrorists, who have killed innocent men, women and children.” 

After riding in a Tesla with Elon Musk at the White House, Trump addressed his promise that Khalil’s detention would be the first of many related to antisemitic campus unrest. 

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“I think we ought to get them all out of the country. They’re troublemakers. They’re agitators. They don’t love our country. We ought to get him the hell out,” Trump said Tuesday. “I heard his statements, too. There were plenty bad. And I think we ought to get him the hell out of the country … I watched him, I watched tapes, specifically, I watched tapes…> You can have him, okay? You can have him, and you can have the rest of them.” 

“Let them go to school, let them learn. Columbia used to be a good school. Now it’s been overrun because of bad leadership. That’s what happens. Happens to countries, it happens to the universities, and it happens to companies,” Trump said. 

Fox News’ Maria Paronich and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.