Pro-Palestinian activist and former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who has been labeled pro-Hamas by the Trump administration, will now have to make Algeria his new home, as announced by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday.
This development follows an appellate court ruling that has paved the way for the Syrian-born activist’s removal.
Let’s be very clear about who Mahmoud is and why his name matters.
He wasn’t some passive bystander caught up in a protest wave. Mahmoud was a key Columbia University activist and a self-styled “student negotiator” during the violent, lawless campus takeovers that erupted after the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023.
And that’s the part the establishment media loves to glide past.
After Hamas butchered civilians, slaughtered families, raped women, kidnapped children, and dragged hostages into terror tunnels, a shocking portion of America’s elite universities didn’t mourn. They celebrated.
Instead of condemning barbarism, mobs of students rushed to defend the perpetrators — hiding behind slogans about “the plight of the Palestinian people” while effectively laundering propaganda for a terrorist organization. This was open sympathy for mass murderers.
And Mahmoud wasn’t on the sidelines. He was helping organize, negotiate, and legitimize protests that shut down campuses, intimidated Jewish students, vandalized property, and openly praised the group that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Let’s also dispense with another inconvenient truth the activists refuse to acknowledge: Hamas was elected. In 2006, the Palestinian electorate voted Hamas into power. Not imposed. Not seized in a coup.
Voted in.
The same Hamas that now runs Gaza as a terror state, uses civilians as human shields, fires rockets from hospitals, and builds tunnels instead of schools.
So when campus radicals tell you they’re just standing with “the people,” what they’re really doing is defending the political movement that chose jihad over coexistence.
Mahmoud wasn’t protesting for peace.
He was participating in a movement that rationalized mass murder, excused terrorism, and turned American universities into propaganda stages for Hamas. But Mahmoud will not be enjoying the freedoms of the United States any longer, according to DHS:
“It looks like he’ll go to Algeria. That’s what the thought is right now,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, told “Katie Pavlich Tonight” when asked about Khalil.
“It’s a reminder for those who are in this country on a visa or on a green card. You are a guest in this country — act like it,” she added. “It is a privilege, not a right, to be in this country to live or to study.”
“It is a privilege, not a right.” Spot. On.