BREAKING: US Judge Rules Mahmoud Khalil Can Be Deported To Algeria or Syria

Not because he committed any crimes, but thanks to an outdated 1952 law that gives the Secretary of State the power to kick out anyone they don’t like.

In yet another chilling blow to free expression, a U.S. immigration judge in Louisiana ruled Friday that Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil can be deported. Not because he committed any crimes, but thanks to an outdated 1952 law that gives the Secretary of State the power to kick out anyone they don’t like, no questions asked.

The decision—handed down at a moment when campuses across the country are erupting in pro-Palestine solidarity—sends a dangerous message: dissent, especially from the marginalized, will be punished, opening the floodgates for more than hundreds of other international students being targeted by the administration for speaking out against U.S.-backed atrocities and crimes of humanity.

Mahmoud Khalil told the deportation judge in Louisiana:

“I would like to quote what you said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness. Clearly, what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process. This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family.”

More than 600 international students and recent grads in the U.S. have had their visas revoked or legal status changed, many linked to pro-Palestinian activism.

Khalil’s legal team has been given until April 23 to file applications for relief. If they miss that deadline, the judge has said she will issue an order of removal to Syria, where he was born, or to Algeria, where he is a citizen — a threat that reeks more of political retaliation than justice.

The government presented no actual evidence of the alleged misrepresentations Khalil is accused of making on his green card application—claims that were used as the pretext for the deportation proceedings in the first place.

Mahmoud, who is about to miss the birth of his child, is being used to send a chilling message.

In a telling moment, Khalil’s attorney, Marc Van Der Hout, pointed to Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s involvement, saying:

“Rubio talks about First Amendment activity in the United States and the effect on people in the U.S. His ‘determination’ has absolutely nothing to do with foreign policy.”

Rubio’s interference is just the latest example of how Palestine solidarity is being criminalized, conflated with extremism, and used as a litmus test for who gets to belong in America. This is more than a legal ruling—it’s a political signal. And the stakes—for free speech, academic freedom, and for basic human dignity—could not be higher.

At Stanford, twelve students and alumni now face felony vandalism charges after occupying the university president’s office and renaming it Dr. Adnan’s Office, in honor of a Palestinian doctor tortured and killed in Israeli custody. They now face up to 3 years and 8 months in prison.

Meanwhile in Gaza, thirst is being weaponized. Israel has bombed one of the only operational water desalination plants, effectively cutting off the last source of clean drinking water for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. In Gaza today, many fear dying of thirst before the bombs even reach them. Starvation, dehydration, annihilation—it is all part of the strategy.

Was this desalination plant yet another so-called Hamas command center? Or just another target in a military strategy that confuses basic survival with terrorism? With every lie, Israel furthers its scorched-earth campaign: a systematic effort to starve, expel, and obliterate Palestinians in Gaza.

While the West debates semantics, Palestinians count calories—and corpses.

The Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) issued an urgent appeal on Thursday calling for immediate international intervention to halt what it described as a “systematic and deliberate” famine and genocide in the Gaza Strip, amid escalating Israeli military operations and a deepening humanitarian crisis. declared famine in Gaza. For nearly 40 days, Israel’s full blockade has sealed off all food, fuel, and aid. And now even bread is a memory.

On April 1, the World Food Programme announced that its last operating bakeries in Gaza had shut down due to a lack of flour and fuel. The same day, Gaza’s bakery union declared all bakeries closed. The Head of the Bakery Owners Association confirmed the total collapse of Gaza’s local bread production.

After 552 days, the UN Human Rights Office, in its typically diplomatic fashion, acknowledges that Israel's tactics of annihilation and forced displacement, disguised as evacuation orders, amount to genocide in Gaza.

In the language of war criminals and UN euphemisms, this is called “creating humanitarian pressure.” In reality, it’s just famine with a press release.

Despite the suffocating censorship, Israel’s narrative control is slipping.

Between March 18 and April 9 alone, Israel launched 224 airstrikes on homes and makeshift IDP tents. In 36 verified cases, every person killed was either a woman or a child. These murders are not mistakes.

For a year and a half, most of Israel's Jewish public stood in lockstep behind the state’s campaign in Gaza. But after Netanyahu’s government collapsed the most recent ceasefire proposal, disillusionment is finally setting in.

The Israeli army is now facing its worst refusal crisis since 1982. Over 100,000 reservists have reportedly stopped showing up for duty. Of the nearly 300,000 originally called up, recent estimates suggest that only 50–60% are still reporting.

The reasons vary—moral disgust, economic ruin, political disillusionment—but the effect is seismic. Even retired IDF officers are calling Netanyahu’s war what it really is: politically motivated carnage. And yet, the Prime Minister — wanted by the ICC for war crimes — has threatened to fire any soldier who dares ask for an end to the killing.

How very democratic.

Refusal movements like Yesh Gvul are growing. One petition signed by Israeli intelligence unit members declared: “This war serves political and personal interests—not security ones.” A separate letter by 950 Israeli Air Force veterans warned: continuing the war could kill hostages and soldiers alike.

Even 360 Israeli medical professionals, half of them doctors, signed a letter demanding an investigation into the Israeli military’s killing of aid workers in Rafah.

Despite the repression, the taboo is breaking.

“It is becoming increasingly legitimate to refuse military service,” writes Meron Rapoport in +972 Magazine, “and not only among the radical left.”

According to Israeli sociologist Yael Berda, the refusal isn’t just ideological—it’s economic. Nearly half of Israeli reservists report major income loss since October 7, and 41% were fired or forced to leave their jobs.

In a society that militarizes nationalism and enforces apartheid through economic inequality, even minor cracks in public support are tectonic.

These cracks in Israeli society, though belated, are welcome. But they remain rooted in Israeli discomfort, not Palestinian humanity. Even the letters begging for peace rarely include the word “Palestinian.” The violence is still viewed as something Israel owns and can opt to stop—not something Palestinians are experiencing as genocide.

Even in the U.S., we’re seeing shifts once unimaginable.

A Pew Research poll last week found that 53% of Americans now have a negative view of Israel. Among Democrats under 50, that number rises to 71%. Even among Republicans under 50, half now view Israel unfavorably.

Only older Republicans continue to support Israel in large numbers. The tide is turning—but the stakes are rising too, and the cracks are not enough.

In London, Greenpeace activists dyed the pond outside the U.S. embassy blood red to symbolize the U.S. government’s complicity. Five were arrested.

For decades, Israel has used propaganda to sanitize its war crimes. The bombing of the UN compound in Lebanon in 1996. The lie about a command center under Al-Shifa hospital. The execution of Shireen Abu Akleh. The “mistaken” murder of Hind al-Rajab. Now, they say the UN is Hamas, journalists are Hamas, ambulances are Hamas.

If there’s a consistency in this war, it’s the choreography of deception—one that Western media outlets continue to dance to.

The Red Crescent has now formally accused Israel of war crimes for deliberately targeting medics. But don’t hold your breath. The international community hasn’t even blinked at Israel’s newly announced plans to depopulate Rafah—a city that once held 250,000 people and now exists as a graveyard in waiting.

Western media continues to serve as Israel’s most reliable ally—not in weaponry, but in narrative. It’s not journalism. It’s janitorial work: cleaning up the blood with language, sterilizing genocide with words like “clashes” and “self-defense.” And when the truth can’t be contained, it’s either buried in the 14th paragraph or washed away entirely by headlines like: “American hospitals would be overwhelmed by Gaza-level trauma.”

So why are Western media still pretending Israel deserves the benefit of the doubt?

As media watchdogs like

Palestine Deep Dive

and Mondoweiss show, the West’s complicity in genocide lies not just in weapons sales or UN vetoes—but in its headlines. In its silences. In its refusal to name what is happening.

Despite growing refusal inside Israel, despite the global awakening, none of this will matter unless real pressure—political, economic, institutional—is applied to force Israel to stop.

This isn’t unprecedented. We’ve seen it before.

In the 1980s, it wasn’t moral clarity alone that ended apartheid in South Africa—it was sanctions, boycotts, media scrutiny, and mass mobilization. What is unfolding in Gaza is not a policy debate—it is a blueprint for annihilation. And as always, it is draped in the language of democracy and defense.

Despite the lies, the people are rising. But until the media, governments, and institutions treat this genocide with the same urgency, there will be no end.

When the history books are written—if they’re written—we will all be asked: What did you do when famine was used as a weapon? When lies were weapons of mass destruction? When the powerful tried to crush the human spirit, and the world politely looked away?

We already know the answer. But it’s not too late to change it.