{"id":5409,"date":"2025-03-24T22:42:19","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T22:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=5409"},"modified":"2025-03-24T22:42:21","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T22:42:21","slug":"trump-administration-claims-palestinian-activist-mahmoud-khalil-misrepresented-information-on-green-card-application","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=5409","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration claims Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil misrepresented information on green card application"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The government has claimed that Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil<\/a> intentionally misrepresented information on his green card application and therefore is inadmissible to the United States.<\/p>\n

According to recent court filings, President Donald Trump’s administration said Khalil failed to disclose when applying for his green card last year that his employment by the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut went “beyond 2022” and that he was a “political affairs officer” for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees from June to November 2023.<\/p>\n

“Khalil is now charged as inadmissible at the time of his adjustment of status because he sought to procure an immigration benefit by fraud of willful misrepresentation of a material fact,” attorneys for the administration said in the filing.<\/p>\n

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Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of media about the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, in New York City, June 1, 2024.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jeenah Moon\/Reuters<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The administration also claimed that Khalil did not tell the government that he was a member of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group.<\/p>\n

The government arrested Khalil on March 8 after invoking a rarely used provision of immigration law<\/a> that they said allows the secretary of state to revoke the legal status of people whose presence in the country could have “adverse foreign policy consequences.” The new accusations seem to represent an attempt to strengthen the administration’s justification for detaining Khalil and denying his release.<\/p>\n

“Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring, and there is an independent basis to justify removal sufficient to foreclose Khalil’s constitutional claim,” the filing says.<\/p>\n

“The additional charges the government filed last week are completely meritless,” Marc Van Der Hout, whose legal firm represents Khalil, told ABC News in response to a request for comment. “They show that the government has no case whatsoever on this bogus charge that his presence in the U.S. would have adverse foreign policy consequences. This case is purely about First Amendment protected activity and speech, and U.S. citizens and permanent residents alike are free to say what they wish about what is going on in the world.”<\/p>\n

“Regardless of his allegations concerning political speech, Khalil withheld membership in certain organizations and failed to disclose continuing employment by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut when he submitted his adjustment of status application. It is black-letter law that misrepresentations in this context are not protected speech,” the government said in the filing.<\/p>\n

During a State Department briefing Monday, spokesperson Tammy Bruce was asked multiple times about whether the department now viewed prior work for UNRWA as grounds for disqualification for visa applicants — but she repeatedly declined to answer.<\/p>\n

“If you lie in your efforts to come to the United States to get a visa for any reason, or for a green card, maybe there haven’t been repercussions, or we haven’t done things properly in the past. A lot of things have changed with the election of Donald Trump,” Bruce said in a general statement during the briefing.<\/p>\n

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Protestors rally in support of Mahmoud Khalil outside of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, during a hearing regarding Khalil’s arrest, in New York City, Mar. 12, 2025.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Charly Triballeau\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Khalil, a leader of the encampment protests at Columbia last spring, was taken upon his initial detention from his student apartment building to 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan and then to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before being transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, according to his legal team.<\/p>\n

ABC News’ Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government has claimed that Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil intentionally misrepresented information on his green card application and therefore is inadmissible to the United States. According to recent court filings, President Donald Trump’s administration said Khalil failed to disclose when applying for his green card last year that his employment by the Syria Office at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5411,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions\/5411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}