As questions swirl about the Trump administration’s legal authority to revoke the green card of Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt offered an answer on Tuesday — a federal statute that permits removing anyone with a U.S. visa or green card whose actions are “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”

Leavitt was referring to a passage in the Immigration and Nationality Act, the 1952 law that governs immigration, which says that if the secretary of state has “reasonable grounds” to believe that a migrant poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” to the United States, that person is able to be deported. When asked if a green card holder must be charged with a crime in order to be eligible for deportation, Leavitt — in stating plainly that Secretary of State Marco Rubio already retains the power to deport individuals — suggested the answer is no.

“Secretary Rubio exercised that authority, and we fully believe that we are going to move forward with more arrests,” Leavitt said. A White House official told The Free Press that Khalil is not currently being charged with a crime: “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” the official said.

Khalil, a 30-year-old of Palestinian descent who grew up in Syria, was detained by immigration authorities on Saturday in Manhattan. He had been a leader of the anti-Israel encampment protesting the war in Gaza on Columbia’s campus last spring, and served as its lead negotiator with university administrators. 

“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda flyers with the logo of Hamas,” said Leavitt.

Many on the left, including the leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have rallied around Khalil as a symbol of overreach by President Donald Trump. But Khalil’s arrest has also drawn scrutiny from some legal experts who see it as an attempt to bypass due process protections and target anti-Israel speech. Some have cheered the move, saying that Khalil’s leadership in the encampment movement is evidence enough of his involvement in criminal acts. 

Trump administration officials have made clear that Khalil is just the first foreign student activist likely to face immigration consequences. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security have been working together since Trump signed an executive order on antisemitism in January to identify other people to deport.

“They have been using intelligence to identify individuals on our nation’s colleges and universities, on our college campuses, who have engaged in such behavior and activity, and especially illegal activity,” Leavitt said. She stated that Columbia has received the names of other “pro-Hamas” students that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to deport, but Columbia is not cooperating with them. 

A Columbia spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, sent an email on Monday to university affiliates that said she “understand[s] the distress” around ICE officers on campus but didn’t mention Khalil.