Op-ed: Yes, Trump Can and Must Deport Noncitizen Supporters of Hamas

Congress has provided the Department of Homeland Security with powerful tools to remove noncitizen immigrants who support terrorism or incite genocide.

The Biden administration refused to use these tools. Fortunately, the Trump administration thinks differently.

Hamas’s meticulously planned October 2023 massacre of Israeli civilians resulted, in then-President Biden’s words, in “the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” with “more than 1,000 civilians slaughtered,” “parents butchered using their bodies to try to protect their children.” Biden concluded that Hamas’s act of “pure, unadulterated evil” had “reminded us all” that “silence is complicity.”

What, then, should we call not silence, but vocal celebration of Hamas’s mass murder? As Hamas would gladly kill every Jew in Israel if it had the opportunity, this is akin to the celebration of genocide.

Much of this celebration took place on Americans college campuses by foreign students during demonstrations apparently catalyzed by campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine. The Anti-Defamation League reported that the group’s chapters giddily celebrated the massacres.

But federal law provides powerful tools enabling the removal of noncitizen immigrants who advocate for terrorism and incite genocide. I should know — I had the honor of assisting House Judiciary Committee Chair F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. in his successful push for the inclusion of provisions in the PATRIOT Act in 2001 and the REAL ID Act in 2005, providing for the deportation of immigrants who endorse or espouse terrorism.

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[Read the rest at The Hill]