A legal group claiming President Donald Trump has no authority to deport a Palestinian protester previously warned others about how pro-Hamas advocacy could get them deported.
Syrian national Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team has argued that the Trump administration’s plan to deport him for leading Columbia University’s pro-Hamas encampment violates the First Amendment. But three lawyers representing him — Ramzi Kassem, Naz Ahmad and Shezza Dallal — work for Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility (CLEAR) at the City University of New York, a group advising noncitizens that they can lose citizenship for supporting terrorists, as Khalil is accused of doing.
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The CLEAR lawyers joined other organizations in a lawsuit after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Khalil on March 8. Columbia briefly suspended him in April 2024 for assisting an illegal tent encampment on behalf of the activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), acting as a “lead negotiator” to pressure the school to financially “divest” from Israel. Encampment protesters praised Hamas and its Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel while harassing Jewish students, and the Trump administration is fighting a court battle to deport Khalil on a national security basis.
Despite invoking the Constitution in Khalil’s defense, CUNY CLEAR has distributed materials advising foreign anti-Israel activists that they should avoid pro-terrorist speech that “can adversely affect a non-citizen’s immigration status” under federal law.
A “know your rights” document from CLEAR appears to paraphrase the Immigration and Nationality Act, saying that “inciting, advocating, declaring public approval/support of, or persuading others to advocate or declare public approval/support of ‘terrorist activity’” or a “terrorist organization” can lead to deportation. The guide warns that “being a representative … of any group” that endorses terrorism is risky for a foreign national, echoing the text of the law.
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“If you are a non-citizen who has exercised your First Amendment right to associate with any organization or a specific cause, consider consulting an attorney before applying for any immigration benefits or appearing for any immigration-related interviews,” CLEAR said.
Dallal from CLEAR also helped deliver a “know your rights” presentation giving activists the same advice, a newly resurfaced video shows.
Dallal and CLEAR did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Constitutional law expert Ilya Shapiro told the DCNF he agrees with CLEAR that “certain kinds of statements” supporting terrorism make a foreigner “removable” from the country. He has argued that Khalil’s conduct puts him on the wrong side of the law.
“Noncitizens certainly have First Amendment rights, in the sense that they can’t be criminally prosecuted for speech outside a narrow range of cases ([such as] incitement of violence), but screening or vetting under the Immigration and Nationality Act includes looking at statements as evidence of support for or membership in organizations that are Nazi, Communist, authoritarian, or terrorism-oriented, among other disqualifying criteria,” the Manhattan Institute senior fellow said.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously said that neither Khalil nor any noncitizen is entitled to a visa or green card, especially if they are “being a supporter of Hamas and coming into our universities and turning them upside down and being complicit in what are clearly crimes of vandalization, complicit in shutting down learning institutions.”
Khalil’s legal team has portrayed his activism at Columbia as merely pro-Palestinian, not pro-terrorism. His March 13 lawsuit claims, “opponents of these students’ messages … frequently characterized peaceful protest and any speech in favor of Palestinian rights as inherently supportive of Hamas and antisemitic.”
“He does not have any affiliation, does not support Hamas,” another of his lawyers told WABC-TV.
However, Khalil’s CUAD group explicitly supports terrorists.
Ahead of the Columbia encampment, CUAD hosted a virtual “Resistance 101” with speakers from the pro-Hamas organization Samidoun, which the Treasury Department determined to be an illegal sponsor of the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). One of the speakers was longtime PFLP terrorist leader Khaled Barakat, while the other was a Samidoun leader who told her audience that “there is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas.”
Samidoun did not respond to a request for comment.
Later on, CUAD published a November Substack article lionizing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar after Israel killed him in October.
“Yahya Sinwar and his resilience will live in the hearts of many,” it said, praising his role in the Oct. 7 attacks as an example of “resistance by any means necessary.”
Khalil and his group also led a takeover of a building at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College that began in February, during which protesters distributed Hamas’s official manifesto justifying Oct. 7.
Liberals have nonetheless made Khalil a free speech symbol, with more than 100 House Democrats saying Trump is using “the playbook of authoritarians” in a March 14 letter.
The Department of Justice (DOJ), which represents the government in court, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s immigration officials continue to crack down on alleged terrorist sympathizers from other nations. News broke on March 14 that one Columbia student chose to self-deport rather than face them.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said about the student’s departure. “When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
