Op-Ed: Attorney General Brenna Bird: President Trump and Marco Rubio have the legal and moral obligation to deport pro-terrorist non-citizens
October 7, 2023, sent shockwaves across the world as barbaric Hamas terrorists raped women, burned babies, and gunned down innocents. When the dust settled, we learned that those terrorists had killed more than 1,400 people, including Americans. They held hundreds more hostage. And those aren’t just statistics. They are moms and dads. Sons and daughters. Grandparents and neighbors.
This was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and one of the darkest days in world history.
And today, the evil ideology behind that attack persists. Almost a year and a half after the attack, colleges continue to let anti-Semitism fester and support for terrorism plague their campuses. It’s hard to believe what we see: students are celebrating the mass slaughter on October 7, chanting for the elimination of Jews, and acting as Hamas foot soldiers. Universities have become a safe haven for some of the most active supporters of the world’s most vicious killers.
But there is good news: President Donald Trump and Secretary Marco Rubio are exterminating terrorism from our college campuses. Living in America is a privilege. If the guests here on visas or green cards support baby-killing terrorists like Hamas, they forfeit that privilege.
In September, I was glad to co-lead a strong coalition of states in supporting a lawsuit by survivors and families of Americans who were murdered in the Hamas terror massacre on October 7. Student groups like American Muslims for Palestine and the National Students for Justice in Palestine are a pipeline to Hamas — sending moral and financial support to terrorists. These groups lead Hamas’s American propaganda machine and recruit material support for the war criminals who mass-murdered kids and families. As we’ve seen in recent days, those groups are not alone.
That is why the Trump administration is sending a loud and clear message: foreign terrorist sympathizers will be deported. No if, ands, or buts. And the law is on his side.
The Immigration and Naturalization Act empowers the president and his administration to strip visas and green cards away, and to deport foreigners in our country who support terrorists. This is exactly the case we’re seeing on campuses today.
The same law also grants the president sweeping power over the immigration status of foreigners who are “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” It doesn’t take a legal scholar to tell you that supporting terrorism is a national security threat.
The Supreme Court long ago recognized that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. It does not require our country to let in people who have sworn to destroy it — or let them stay once they’re here.
Look no further than the Fiallo v. Bell decision in 1977, which called the deportation power a “fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control.” In other words, the president doesn’t need a judge’s permission to deport a national security threat; The president gets to call those shots.
So, we know the Trump administration is standing on solid legal ground. But not only can the president deport foreign terrorist sympathizers, he should. The United States is not a harbor for those who cheer that terrorists gang-raped kidnapped women; cheer that mothers are crying over their murdered children’s bodies; cheer for the strangling to death of a toddler and his baby brother.
As a mom and prosecutor, I echo Secretary Rubio’s message to any green card or visa holder in our country caught doing a terrorist’s bidding: Leave.
Brenna Bird is the Attorney General of Iowa.
