A graduate student from India with a student visa who had been teaching at Georgetown University.
A professor at Brown University’s medical school who also has a valid visa and hails from Lebanon.
A pro-Palestinian activist with a green card who recently graduated from Columbia University and has a baby on the way with his U.S. citizen wife.
All three scholars have been targeted by the Trump administration for deportation this month despite the fact that they all have papers allowing them to live and work in the U.S.
In each case, the Department of Homeland Security has justified its decision to kick them out of the country by citing an obscure provision in immigration law that dates to the Cold War and gives the secretary of state the authority to deport that person.
“The Secretary of State has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,” reads a document in one of the deportation cases, citing the provision.
Back in 1952, when Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, the aim was to keep Communists out of America.
Now, the provision has become yet another legal weapon the Trump administration is deploying to fulfill its mandate to deport millions of migrants, experts said.
And it’s a potentially potent weapon, Gabriel J. Chin, a professor of law at UC Davis, wrote in a recent piece on the rights of green card holders that attempted to answer the question of whether the Trump administration could legally deport Khalil.
“While lawful permanent residents may not be criminally prosecuted for their political speech or activity, what they say or write may well affect their ability to remain in the U.S., if the government determines that they are a security risk,” Chin wrote.
Until now, Homeland Security officials have mostly targeted the legions of desperate migrants who crossed into the country via the U.S.-Mexico border and who have claimed asylum but have no firm legal status in the U.S.
But the deportation of Brown University’s Dr. Rasha Alawieh to Lebanon and the detentions of Georgetown University’s Badar Khan Suri and Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil are signaling that the Trump administration also has in its crosshairs — and may be trying to make examples of — accomplished academics who may not be on the same page as the government when it comes to foreign policy.
“There is no question that this is an attempt by Trump and his administration to chill the speech of academics, particularly those who are not U.S. citizens, that he does not agree with,” Chin told NBC News. “This is a new era.”
That appears to be the case with Khalil, 30. An Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, Khalil is a legal permanent resident of the U.S. But he became a target of the Trump administration when he became the unmasked face of pro-Palestinian student demonstrations that roiled Columbia last year.
Immigration agents arrested Khalil in front of his wife, Noor Abdalla, on March 8 in New York City and briefly took him to a detention center in New Jersey before transferring him to a facility in Louisiana. He has not been charged with a crime; Homeland Security officials said he was targeted because he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
On Monday, a federal judge barred the government from deporting Khalil and ordered that his case be moved to New Jersey.
Khalil, in a letter he dictated over the phone to his family, said he was a “political prisoner” who was “targeted” for advocating for the Palestinian cause. At least one other student at the Ivy League school was detained by immigration officials following the protests.
Suri, who is believed to be 41, was detained on Monday by masked DHS agents as he was returning to the Virginia home he shares with his wife, Mapheze Saleh, and their three children. The detention was first reported by Politico.
Georgetown said it was not aware of Suri engaging in any “illegal activity,” and neither the DHS nor the State Department responded to questions from NBC on why Suri was taken into custody.
But Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said on X, in response to the Politico story, that Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.”
McLaughlin also alleged that “Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.”
“He was simply commenting on the Israel-Palestine war, as many people do in this country, many people have opinions on it. He has a right to speak about political change,” said Sophia Gregg, an attorney for ACLU of Virginia who represents Suri. “There has been no allegation that he’s ever advocated for violence.”
Gregg also said this matter isn’t about “some sort of familial relations with somebody,” instead “he’s being targeted for his political speech and that is something that cannot be tolerated in this country.”
Suri, as of Wednesday, was being held at a detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana. His attorneys on Thursday asked a federal court to compel the government to return him to Virginia, suggesting that he was rounded up on the basis of his speech on Palestinian rights and that that violated the due process clause and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“Dr. Suri’s experience is shocking and disgraceful,” said Suri’s immigration attorney, Hassan Ahmad. “It should worry everyone that masked government agents can disappear someone from their home and family because the current administration dislikes their opinion.”
A judge ordered Suri not to be deported “unless and until” the court changes its position.
Alawieh, a 34-year-old Lebanese citizen with a valid H-1B visa, was sent back to her homeland after she told customs agents at Boston Logan International Airport that she had attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader in Iran-back Hezbollah, the DHS said in a statement Monday.
When asked if she supported Nasrallah, Alawieh said as a Shia Muslim she did but “from a religious perspective.”
“A visa is a privilege not a right — glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied,” the agency responded later.
If Alawieh did attend the Nasrallah funeral, she had plenty of company. Tens of thousands of people gathered at the 48,000-capacity Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium in Beirut.
But Alawieh, a kidney and transplant specialist who had been in the U.S. since 2018, was deported despite an order from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts that she should not be removed from the state without 48 hours’ notice to “give the Court time to consider the matter.”
“We’re not going to stop fighting to get her back in the U.S. to see her patients, and we’re also going to make sure that the government follows the rule of law,” Alawieh’s immigration lawyer, Stephanie Marzouk, told reporters Monday.
Rep. Gabe Amo, D-R.I., said his office has been working since Friday to “assess the facts surrounding Dr. Alawieh, including the apparent violation of a federal judge’s order.”
Meanwhile, Alawieh’s colleagues at Brown’s division of nephrology in East Providence, Rhode Island, were trying to square the person they worked with with the DHS statement.
“She’s a very nice person,” Dr. George Bayliss said.
