Trump Is Right to Deport Hamas Supporters:

Federal law authorizes denying or revoking the visa of anyone who supports terrorist activity.

Six weeks into the second Trump administration, and days after President Trump vowed to push back on “illegal protests” on college campuses, the State Department has pulled the first visa of a foreign student who engaged in pro-Hamas disruptions. That’s the right thing to do if we want to fix campus cultures. And contrary to disingenuous critics, such a move poses no First Amendment problems.

Indeed, it’s a basic application of U.S. immigration law, which says that people here on a visa (tourist, student, employment, or otherwise) who reveal themselves to be ineligible for that visa—“inadmissible,” in the parlance of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA)—can have their visa revoked. As I wrote in a broader analysis of campus-related civil rights issues after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, “The Immigration and Nationality Act allows the denial or revocation of a visa of ‘any alien who . . . endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.’” Biden’s State Department also told then-Senator Marco Rubio that it could revoke the visas of Hamas supporters.

But that’s not all Trump can do. The INA’s inadmissibility provision also empowers the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whom he determines to be “detrimental to the interests of the United States” or to impose on them “any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” During Trump’s first term, the Supreme Court upheld that broad grant of presidential discretion to vet, restrict, and even ban immigrants—and thus to direct executive-agency action in that regard—at the culmination of the high-profile “travel ban” litigation. In Trump v. Hawaii, the Court okayed an executive order restricting travel from various countries, with Chief Justice John Roberts affirming that the only statutory requirement is that the president “find” the entry of the affected aliens to be “detrimental to the national interest.”

That’s exactly what’s happening now. In one of the first executive orders Trump signed, he directed federal agencies to strengthen vetting and screening of those seeking admission and those already in the country, because “the United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.” Then, as part of the “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” he ordered the use of “all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”

All of this makes eminent sense: it’s the government’s duty to screen out visitors and migrants who would be harmful to our country, including those who reject our values or are hostile to our way of life, such as Communists, Nazis, or Islamists. When I got my green card, and again when I naturalized, I had to affirm that I wasn’t affiliated with these groups “or any other totalitarian party.” To give another example in a different context, in 2020, 1,000 Chinese nationals had their visas revoked for being national security risks—and the Biden administration successfully defended that Trump action in court.

These core government functions are supported by law. As the INA says, “The admission to the United States of any alien as a nonimmigrant shall be for such time and under such conditions as the Attorney General may by regulations prescribe.” Other provisions of the law cover “travel controls of citizens and aliens,” “issuance of visas,” and “deportable aliens.”

While the government can’t send foreigners to jail for saying things it doesn’t like, it can and should deny or pull visas for those who advocate for causes inimical to the United States. There’s nothing objectional or controversial about removing those who harass, intimidate, vandalize, and otherwise interfere with an educational institution’s core mission. More, please.