Op-ed: Can We Deport Foreigners Advocating Evil?

In then-President Joe Biden’s words, Hamas’ October 7, 2023, intricately orchestrated murder of over one thousand Israelis was an act of “pure, unadulterated evil,” resulting in “the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” with “[c]hildren slaughtered”, “[b]abies slaughtered”, “[e]ntire families massacred”.

Americans then witnessed the spectacle of intricately orchestrated and brazen celebrations on U.S. college campuses of Hamas’ atrocities, with foreign students seemingly taking first chair. At now notorious Columbia University in New York City, between 38 and 55 percent of students are foreign, depending on how they are counted, according to my former Center for Immigration Studies colleague John Feere. Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, according to the White House press secretary, “organized group protests … that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish-American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda fliers.”

The curriculum for these masterclasses in hate was apparently copied from the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) handbook. The Anti-Defamation League reported SJP chapters giddily celebrating Hamas’ massacres, including the Tufts University chapter proclaiming that “[f]ootage of liberation fighters from Gaza paragliding into occupied territory [Israel] has especially shown the creativity necessary to take back stolen land”, and the Bard University chapter proclaiming “Liberation … requires confrontation by any means necessary. From the river to the sea [alluding to the eradication of Israel], we will continue to fight”. Last October, Swarthmore College needed to send a message “condemning” the Swarthmore SJP chapter’s internet post, “Happy October 7th everyone! In honor of this glorious day and all our martyred revolutionaries”. Swarthmore stated that “celebrating the killing of innocent people is shocking and reprehensible.”

As Hamas would gladly kill every Jew in Israel had it the opportunity, this all calls to mind the incitement driving the 1994 Rwandan genocide. U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy wrote Secretary of State Warren Christopher of reports that “a private station affiliated with an extremist Hutu political party” was broadcasting messages urging the “kill[ing of] all remaining Tutsi children”, urging “‘Take up your machetes; the graves are only half full! Who will help us fill them?’” Kennedy warned that the broadcasts were “continuing to incite genocide of the Tutsi people” and pled with Christopher to help jam them.

It seems like a pretty commonsense proposition that a nation need not tolerate guests who celebrate and advocate mass murder. As Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has written, “While American citizens may have a First Amendment right to speak disgusting vitriol if they so choose, no foreign national has a right to advocate for terrorism in the United States.”

. . .

[Read the rest at the International Network for Immigration Research]