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The Trump administration appears to be ramping up efforts to deport foreign-born students who are in the United States legally but whom <\/span>authorities accuse<\/span><\/a> of opposing U.S. foreign policy\u2014<\/span>without offering<\/span><\/a> any evidence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As of Friday morning, U.S. officials have now moved to deport two such individuals. On March 8, immigration agents <\/span>arrested<\/span><\/a> Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States who is of <\/span>Palestinian descent<\/span><\/a> and was a graduate student at Columbia University until December and a prominent figure in the school\u2019s student protests against the war in Gaza.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then on Monday, immigration officials arrested Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow and Indian national who is in the United States on a <\/span>student visa<\/span><\/a>. In a <\/span>post<\/span><\/a> on X, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson accused Suri of promoting Hamas propaganda and having ties to a senior Hamas advisor. However, his lawyer has said that Suri was targeted because of his wife\u2019s <\/span>Palestinian heritage<\/span><\/a>, and Georgetown has said it has <\/span>not received<\/span><\/a> a reason for his detention and is not aware of any illegal activity.<\/span><\/p>\n Neither <\/span>Khalil<\/span><\/a> nor <\/span>Suri<\/span><\/a> has been charged with a crime, according to their respective <\/span>lawyers<\/span><\/a>. Instead, in both cases Trump administration officials have cited an <\/span>obscure<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>rarely used provision<\/span><\/a> of the Immigration and Nationality Act that <\/span>empowers<\/span><\/a> the secretary of state to deport any noncitizen whose continued presence in the United States, they believe, \u201cwould have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The moves have set the stage for <\/span>fierce legal battles<\/span><\/a> and roiled universities, some of which are already wrestling with the Trump administration\u2019s <\/span>push<\/span><\/a> to <\/span>bind<\/span><\/a> hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding<\/a><\/span> to its own vision for American universities. Trump\u2019s deportation moves have also sparked outrage and alarm over free speech, particularly in universities and over Israel and Gaza, as the administration appears to be <\/span>targeting individuals<\/span><\/a> who have expressed criticism of the Israeli government or support for the Palestinian cause.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTrump has made no effort to disguise the fact that the arrests of academics like Suri and Mahmoud Khalil is intended to have a chilling effect and discourage the free expression of political views which Trump dislikes,\u201d Democratic Virginia Rep. Don Beyer said in a <\/span>statement<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIn both cases, the administration has punished speech with frightening, extreme measures that, if it happened in another country, most of us would not hesitate to call \u2018authoritarianism,\u2019\u201d said Beyer, who added that the arrest of Suri\u2014Beyer\u2019s constituent\u2014\u201cis a clear violation of his constitutional rights.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Yet even with these legal challenges, Khalil and Suri\u2019s arrests may be just the start of a <\/span>broader deportation crackdown<\/span><\/a> against foreign-born students or academics who express or are tied to <\/span>pro-Palestinian activism<\/span><\/a>\u2014even if those people are in the country legally. Campus protests that swept the country last year sparked a national debate over U.S. support for Israel, free speech on university campuses, and <\/span>antisemitism<\/span><\/a>\u2014issues that Trump <\/span>seized upon<\/span><\/a> in his presidential campaign.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all,\u201d Trump <\/span>said<\/span><\/a> in one campaign video, adding that he would reclaim \u201cour once-great educational institutions from the radical left.\u201d \u201cWe are going to have real education in America,\u201d he declared.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now in office, Trump has vowed to move full-speed ahead with his deportations. After Khalil\u2019s arrest, Trump labeled him a \u201cRadical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student\u201d in a post on <\/span>Truth Social<\/span><\/a> and declared that \u201cthis is the first arrest of many to come.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Many of the student arrests so far have been tied to the Columbia University protests. Also in March, Ranjani Srinivasan, a Columbia graduate student, <\/span>fled to Canada<\/span><\/a> after her student visa was revoked and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up at her apartment. Srinivasan had shared social media posts about human rights violations in Gaza and attended a handful of protests, according to her lawyers, and was <\/span>briefly detained<\/span><\/a> at another protest that she said she was not participating in. U.S. officials have also arrested Leqaa Kordia\u2014a Palestinian from the West Bank who was <\/span>previously arrested<\/span><\/a> during the Columbia University protests\u2014for <\/span>overstaying<\/span><\/a> a student visa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe 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,\u201d Trump declared in his post on Truth Social. \u201cWe will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country\u2014never to return again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That pledge was echoed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. \u201cWe will be revoking the visas and\/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,\u201d he said in a <\/span>post on X<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In an interview with <\/span>NPR<\/span><\/a> last week, DHS Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar accused Khalil of \u201cpromoting this antisemitism activity\u201d and claimed that his visa was revoked \u201cfor supporting a terrorist type organization.\u201d But when asked, Edgar did not explain exactly what conduct Khalil engaged in to warrant his arrest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think you can see it on TV, right?\u201d Edgar <\/span>said<\/span><\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country, and he\u2019s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity. And at this point, like I said, the Secretary of State can review his visa process at any point and revoke it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent,\u201d Khalil said in a <\/span>letter<\/span><\/a> published in the <\/span>Guardian<\/span><\/i>, which was dictated to family and friends from a detention facility in Louisiana. \u201cVisa holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In Suri\u2019s case, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin has <\/span>accused<\/span><\/a> the Georgetown researcher of \u201cactively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media\u201d and having \u201cclose connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas,\u201d without offering any evidence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Suri has no criminal record and denies McLaughlin\u2019s allegations, <\/span>according to his lawyer<\/span><\/a>. Suri\u2019s wife, Mapheze Saleh, is a master\u2019s student at Georgetown University and a <\/span>U.S. citizen<\/span><\/a>. Saleh\u2019s father, Ahmed Yousef\u2014Suri\u2019s father-in-law\u2014is a former advisor to Hamas\u2019s assassinated top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, <\/span>according<\/span><\/a> to the <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i>. After leaving his post in the Hamas-run government more than a decade ago, the <\/span>Times<\/span><\/i> reported, Yousef has <\/span>publicly questioned<\/span><\/a> Hamas\u2019s rationale for its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Yousef has said that Suri has not engaged in any <\/span>\u201cpolitical activism<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s good that there is a prisoner deal, but it did not require all this bloodshed and destruction,\u201d Yousef <\/span>said<\/span><\/a> in a phone interview with the <\/span>Times<\/span><\/i>. \u201cOct. 7, in my opinion, was a terrible error.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n