Secretary of State Marco Rubio says “we’ll hold doing it” after arrest of Columbia activist

Washington — Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated Sunday that Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who’s being detained by federal immigration authorities, is “going to go away — and so are others.”

“We’ll hold doing it,” Rubio stated on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old who was born in Syria to Palestinian dad and mom, served as a negotiator on behalf of scholars throughout Columbia College’s 2024 pupil encampment protests. He was arrested March 8 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detained in New Jersey earlier than being transported to a federal detention facility in Louisiana. Officers had been performing on a State Division order to revoke his pupil visa, Khalil’s lawyer stated, however once they had been knowledgeable that he was U.S. as a everlasting resident with a inexperienced card, the agent stated they had been revoking that too.  

Rubio stated after the arrest that the administration will likely be revoking the visas and inexperienced playing cards “of Hamas supporters in America to allow them to be deported.”

On Sunday, when requested whether or not he might present proof to help a hyperlink to terrorism, or whether or not Khalil was merely espousing a controversial political viewpoint, Rubio cited information footage, saying “these guys take over total buildings, they vandalize schools.”

“Negotiating on behalf of folks that took over a campus, that vandalized buildings,” Rubio stated. “That is against the law in and of itself, that they are concerned in being a negotiator, the spokesperson.”

The secretary of state defined the thought course of, which he referred to as “quite simple,” outlining that when somebody entered the U.S. with a visa — whether or not as a pupil or vacationer — they achieve this as a “visitor.” 

“And if you happen to inform us, while you apply for a visa, ‘I am coming to the U.S. to take part in pro-Hamas occasions,’ that runs counter to the overseas coverage curiosity of the US of America,” Rubio stated. “In case you had informed us that you simply had been going to do this, we by no means would have given you the visa.”

Neither Rubio nor the White Home have offered proof that Khalil supported Hamas in any method apart from help for the protesters at Columbia College, and Khalil’s legal professionals say he’s being punished for exercising his proper to protest. Khalil’s attorneys have filed a movement to dismiss the case, and declare that his arrest and detention violate the First Modification and the Due Course of Clause of the Fifth Modification.

A high ICE official in New York stated in a courtroom submitting on Thursday that ICE charged Khalil as “detachable … in that the Secretary of State has cheap grounds to imagine that his presence or actions in the US would have doubtlessly critical hostile overseas coverage penalties for the US.”

Rubio stated that if Khalil had stated he deliberate to enter the U.S. to grow to be a “spokesperson and one of many leaders of a motion that is going to show one in every of your allegedly elite schools the wrong way up,” stopping college students from attending lessons and leading to vandalization of buildings, “we by no means would have let him in.”

Extra broadly, Rubio stated the administration “daily now” is approving visa revocations, suggesting that if the visa led to a inexperienced card, that has implications for the inexperienced card course of as properly. 

Requested whether or not folks with pro-Palestinian views could be the only real goal having their visas revoked, Rubio stated members of the Tren de Aragua jail gang could be focused as properly, including that “we do not need terrorists in America.”

“We do not need folks in our nation which are going to be committing crimes and undermining our nationwide safety or the general public security,” Rubio stated. “It is that easy.”