Long before Democrats and liberal activists accused Trump of trampling on the rights of US pro-Hama visa holders, the Biden administration has implemented a visa route policy aimed at Israelis who were plagued by political bias and ambiguous language but suffered from resistance and protest, legal experts told Fox News Digital.
“One is a valid decision,” the legal expert and senior fellow at Eugene Kontrovich, Margaret Thatcher Freedom Center at the Heritage Foundation, explained the restrictions and revocation of President Donald Trump on visas belonging to US Pro Hama students.
“The other was to use the visa system to punish political enemies,” he continued his 2023 Biden visa policy.
The Trump administration is working to revoke visas and green cards belonging to US pro-Hamas students who participated in the widespread anti-Israel protests and riots that shook university campuses last year. The effort was filled with backlash from Democrats who said Trump was attacking the initial right to amend the individuals who protested against Israel.
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Long before Democrats and liberal activists accused Trump of trampling on the rights of US pro-Hama visa holders, the Biden administration launched a visa route aimed at Israeli people. (Getty Images)
Speaking in a phone interview on Wednesday by Fox News Digital, Kontorovich explained that Trump’s actions were not only within his legal boundaries, but were “far more restrained” than the previous administration’s “politicized visa” policy.
The Biden administration was announced in December 2023, just months after the outbreak of war in Israel on October 7, 2023, and announced it would restrict visas to those who appear to have undermined peace and stability in the West Bank. The restrictions were part of the Biden administration’s efforts to achieve a two-state solution for peace in Israel and Palestine, the New York Times reported at the time.
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“Today, the Department of State is implementing a new visa restriction policy aimed at individuals who are believed to be involved in weakening peace, security or stability in the West Bank, including committing violent acts and other actions that overly restrict access to essential services and basic essentials,” the Department said in a December 2023 press release.
Photos taken in the village of Tams Aya near Ramallah city show the settlement of Israel Shiro near the West Bank, occupied on February 18, 2024.
In February 2024, Biden signed an executive order that imposed sanctions that “undermines peace, security and stability in the West Bank” when he condemned “extremist settlers violence” in the West Bank. Under the order, authorized individuals frozen their bank accounts, their credit cards were cancelled, and the implementation of basic living activities was restricted.
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Israeli Mobile Artillery Unit will fire shells from southern Israel towards the Gaza Strip on November 6, 2023, located near the Israeli Gaza border.
Kontorovich explained that the language of the announcement was ambiguous and that the Biden administration allowed individuals to punish individuals who opposed the administration’s policies on the two states’ solutions.
“Biden’s executive order says that even if they don’t encourage or participate in violent activities, they can ban people who oppose our concept. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to say that the two states’ solutions are all and the end.”
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A pile of garbage burned in Union Square in New York City on Monday, October 7, 2024, marking a year from October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel. (Adam Gray from Fox News Digital)
“Half of Congressional lawmakers probably don’t support a solution for the two states, while Hamas is a designated foreign fear,” he continued. “We’re against the two state solutions, not the designated terrorist organization. Hamas lures people, rapes them, kills them. Opponents of the two state solutions don’t.”
Despite the doubts of political motivation behind the policy, it was within Biden’s legal boundaries as the president has the broad power to deny foreign entry.
Kottrovich called the Biden-era visa policy a “no Jews.” It fulfills the title of the “Muslim ban” of the travel ban policy under the first Trump administration, just as it targeted “Israel Jews” based on a political perspective that is very common among Israeli Jews.
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International law experts and professors at George Mason Antonin Scalia Law School continued that Democrats and activist groups did not warn or speak up on Biden Visa Policy at the time.
He added that despite the silence of 2023, Democrats this year referencing Columbia University alumni Mahmoud Khalil, the organizer of the top Prohama protest on campus in 2024, “I’m going to hit for the man who works with a group that openly and actively supports foreign terrorist organizations.”
Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was in discussion with the press on June 1, 2024 during a media briefing hosted by pro-Palestinian protesters who established a new camp at Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus in New York City.
“It just shows how much this rage is manufactured,” he said. “And what Trump is doing isn’t of some sort of new wild and crazy Trump’s. In fact, it’s far more restrained than the previous administration’s politicized visa policy.
Democrats and activists denounced the Trump administration on March 8 for detaining Halil’s ice in an apartment owned by Columbia University in Manhattan. The Department of Homeland Security said he was “a former Colombian graduate student who led activities along Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.
Halil led an anti-Israel protest that plagued campus in April 2024. This included negotiating students for the campus’ radical agitator students, setting up a tent camp and taking over the academic building Hamilton Hall.
Palestinian demonstrators are holding flags on the rooftop of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in New York on April 30, 2024 (Go to Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
He was the leader of a group called Columbia United Apartheid. This required Colombia to sell it entirely from Israel amid the country’s war with Hamas that began on October 7, 2023. The group said it was for Israel to challenge the colonial era with support from the whole United States.
The DHS further reported that Khalil “led activities in line with Hamas, the designated terrorist organization.”
The 47th president signed an executive order in January, informing pro-Hamas protesters that US protesters have been appointed to student visas and that they will be deported.
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Student protesters will gather in New York on Monday, April 29, 2024 in protest within the campus of Columbia University. (Stefan Jeremiah/AP)
“To all the resident aliens who participated in the pro jihadist protests, we have notified you: Come in 2025, we will find you, and we will expel you.” “I will also quickly cancel all Hamas sympathizer student visas on university campuses.
Khalil was born in Syria in 1995 and, according to various reports, was in the US on a green card. He is currently investigating it as a possible threat to U.S. national security, and investigators reportedly found “anti-Semitic and hateful” posts about Halil’s social media accounts, White House sources told Fox News Tuesday.
Liberal lawmakers and activists have described his arrest as an attack on the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech and assembly. However, administrative and legal experts argue that the case focuses on national security and immigration, rather than first amendment rights.
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Kontorvich explained that the Trump administration is not targeting visa students who say they are “bad or scary.” Instead, the administration is targeting foreigners suspected of ties with long-standing designated terrorist organizations.
“I didn’t mean they went out and designated a group they didn’t like,” he added. “It’s not like designing BLM into a terrorist organization.”
Legal scholars also said it is likely that the Trump administration had taken on the most difficult revocation and deportation case in the first place. (Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Legal scholars also said it is likely that the Trump administration took on the most difficult revocation and deportation case first.
“Testing to revoke permanent status is more difficult than visa owners,” he said. “And the government will have to show evidence that he supported something like violence that actively and openly approved Hamas. From what I saw, it is true and it is probably enough to revoke his visa. But by focusing on that, Democrats basically believe this is completely problematic for visa holders.
A senior State Department official told Fox News that Khalil is deportable under section 237(a)(4)(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Immigration Act section states that “foreigners who exist or operate in the United States have reasonable grounds to believe that the Secretary of State has a reasonable basis for believing that there is a potentially serious adverse foreign policy impact on the United States.”
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There is no requirement that a crime be committed under this section of the law. Instead, it offers the Secretary of State a wide range of authority to declare aliens deportation.
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