During a stop at Shannon Airport in Ireland en route to the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting in Canada, following talks on Ukraine, Rubio responded to reporters about the detention and potential deportation of the former Columbia University protest organizer behind large anti-Israel demonstrations.
“You are here as a visitor. We can deny you that visa,” Rubio warned.
He went on to describe that international students couldn’t just get a student visa and then come to the United States country being an activist in support of “Hamas, a murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that rapes teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that returns more bodies than live hostages.”
.@SecRubio on arrest of Mahmoud Khalil: “This is not about free speech. This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card.” pic.twitter.com/eej8vyBLKm
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 12, 2025
Rubio explained how these activists have incited “anti-Jewish sentiments and antisemitic actions” on college campuses, all while benefiting from student visas granted by the U.S.
“We can deny your visa,” he stated. “If you actually end up doing that once you’re in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it.”
“If you end up having a green card, not citizenship but a green card, as a result of that visa while you’re here and [doing] those activities, we’re going to kick you out. It’s as simple as that,” Rubio said.
Khalil, who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the weekend, entered the U.S. on a student visa in 2022, later obtaining a green card. His legal team argues that his detention violates his constitutional rights.
“It is only about repression. The United States government has taken the position that it can arrest, detain, and seek to deport a lawful permanent resident, exclusively because of his peaceful, constitutionally-protected activism, in this case, activism in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza,” Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center of Constitutional Rights and a lawyer on Khalil’s legal team, said on Wednesday.
Rubio responded to criticism that the Trump administration’s actions violated First Amendment rights.
“This isn’t about free speech. This is about people who don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card,” he said.
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“We have the right to deny you entry for virtually any reason, but I think being a supporter of Hamas and coming into our universities, turning them upside down, and being complicit in clear acts of vandalism and shutting down learning institutions — there are students at these schools who can’t attend class — is a legitimate reason,” Rubio added.
A federal judge in New York is hearing Khalil’s case on Wednesday to determine whether his rights have been violated. Earlier this week, the judge temporarily blocked his deportation.
