Rubio doubles down on Trump’s visa cancelations as he goes after dissenters
Sunday 16 March 2025 22:14 EDT
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s push to target and cancel the visas of individual students living in America for participation in protests against the government of Israel.
Rubio deflected questions from CBS’s Margaret Brennan about Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal US permanent resident (green card holder) who was arrested and immediately targeted for deportation last weekend after the Trump administration canceled his visa and arrested him with plainclothes officers at Columbia.
Khalil was a leader in the student protests that developed around campus but was also outspoken against antisemitism.
His arrest has outraged Democrats and civil rights advocates; Khalil is not charged with a crime and did not enter the US illegally. His removal has been temporarily blocked by a judge.
The head of the US State Department would not say, when pressed by Brennan, whether the government would attempt to accuse Khalil with a crime. Instead, he offered a defense of the effort that conceded that visa holders did not have a right to free speech at all.
“When you apply to enter the United States and you get a visa, you are a guest,” Rubio claimed. “If you tell us when you apply for a visa, ‘I’m coming to the U.S. to participate in pro-Hamas events,’ that runs counter to the foreign policy interest of the United States.”