Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on March 27 that the State Department may have revoked the visas of over 300 foreign nationals. “Every time I find one of these lunatics,” said Rubio at a press conference in Guyana, “I take away their visas.” By “these lunatics,” Rubio is almost certainly referring to people involved in pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel activism, although he didn’t specify exactly who he meant. But given what we know about those targeted for deportation, he didn’t have to.

Democrats have predictably characterized this action as an assault on free speech. More interesting, however, is that some on the right, including Ann Coulter, have criticized the decision on First Amendment grounds. “There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport,” she posted on X, “but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the first amendment?”

To answer her question: not quite. Noncitizens do in fact have First Amendment rights, which protect them from criminal or civil penalties. But the Trump administration isn’t charging these individuals with the crime of criticizing Israel—which, of course, is no crime at all—but instead is seeking their deportation. And deportation is another matter entirely.

The Supreme Court clarified the difference between deportation and criminal charges in its 1883 ruling in Fong Yue Ting v. United States (emphasis below is mine):

The order of deportation is not a punishment for crime. It is not a banishment, in the sense in which that word is often applied to the expulsion of a citizen from his country by way of punishment. It is but a method of enforcing the return to his own country of an alien who has not complied with the conditions upon the performance of which the Government of the nation, acting within its constitutional authority, and through the proper departments, has determined that his continuing to reside here shall depend. He has not, therefore, been deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and the provisions of the Constitution securing the right of trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments have no application.

This principle was later upheld in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy (1952), in which the Supreme Court ruled that past membership in the Communist Party was grounds for deportation.

A recent New York Times article by German Lopez laments the precedent this establishes for immigrants:

This approach leaves immigrants with no practical free speech rights, Nadine Strossen, former president of the A.C.L.U., told me. The First Amendment allows us to speak freely without fear of legal retribution. But if an immigrant’s political advocacy gets him deported, he does have to worry about retribution—and may choose not to speak at all.

Put aside your feelings about Israel for a second—whatever those might be—and ask yourself whether you want to live in an America where noncitizen immigrants are free to advocate for radical left-wing politics without consequence. As a conservative immigration hawk, I don’t view this as a hill worth dying on.  

But legality is only one angle. Israel skeptics on the right have criticized the grounds on which these activists have been deported, arguing that anti-Semitism or criticism of the Jewish state’s policies shouldn’t be factors when determining whether a noncitizen immigrant can remain in America.

I understand where they’re coming from. One cannot help but notice that both the federal government and civil society are far quicker to address (real or perceived) anti-Semitism than, say, anti-white or anti-American sentiment. No interest groups exist to combat those forms of animus in the same way that the ADL and countless other Jewish organizations exist to combat anti-Semitism. And if one arose, the ADL would certainly attack it.

The closest any organization has come to fulfilling such a role is America First Legal, which has valiantly led the charge against anti-white discrimination. The fact that AFL did so under the leadership of Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, should prompt introspection among diehard anti-Semites, who seek to reduce politics to “Jew vs. non-Jew.”

That said, claims that President Trump is bending over backward to appease Jewish interest groups while doing nothing for white Americans, who have been undeniably discriminated against for decades, are simply incorrect. Some of his first executive orders involved crackdowns on DEI and affirmative action, with the latter coming as a pleasant surprise, as he didn’t mention it once on the campaign trail.

Of course, the students in question are not having their visas revoked due to any animosity they have espoused toward America or its white majority. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be much controversy on the right. Yet, these activists, as left-wing radicals, most certainly harbor such animosity; it is a prerequisite for membership in today’s left.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a statement from the recently detained Mahmoud Khalil’s organization, Columbia University Apartheid Divest:

We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our Intifada is an internationalist one—we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people. We reject every genocidal, eugenicist regime that seeks to undermine the personhood of the colonized.

As the fascism ingrained in the American consciousness becomes ever more explicit and irrefutable, we seek community and instruction from militants in the Global South, who have been on the frontlines in the fight against tyranny and domination which undergird the imperialist world order.

Not only does Khalil’s organization call for the destruction of the West, it also welcomes guidance from “militants” (read: terrorists) in pursuit of that goal. Wonderful stuff. Did I mention his curious stint working for the British government? All things considered, he is not someone I want in my country. Whatever the rationale, send him—and the others of like minds—packing.

Those on the right skeptical about these removals should consider that virtually all of the activists in question hate the West at least as much as they also hate Israel. For this sort of person, the two are intertwined. This is an important fact to consider, regardless of one’s position on the Jewish state. By deporting an anti-Israel activist, you are also deporting an anti-white, anti-American activist. And we should cheer that.

Given these facts, it is the pinnacle of stupidity to oppose these visa revocations. Conservatives should instead seek to broaden, not narrow, the scope of deportations. We can do that by pushing to make animosity toward the West’s historic peoples, cultures, and religions grounds for removal.

But until that changes, we should shed no tears for the Mahmoud Khalils of this world.