Deport international students who support terror or terrorize their schools

OPINION:

This year’s Hamas-inspired campus lawbreaking has resulted in students being suspended, expelled and arrested. Many colleges, however, took a different path.

For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology refused to suspend international students for breaking the rules, to prevent their deportation. Other schools refused to take any action against disruptive protesters for weeks.

That’s why, before students return this fall, lawmakers and regulators should require universities to take a harder line. International students and staff who support terror or severely disrupt their campuses should be expelled, fired and deported.

Sections 1182 and 1227 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code say that an “alien” who endorses or espouses terrorist activity, or who persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization, is inadmissible to the United States. In addition, “aliens” are deportable if they support terrorism in a way that would have made them inadmissible in the first place.

The law defines “terrorist activity” as, among other things, hijacking, sabotage, assassination, and illegal use of weapons with intent to endanger people or cause substantial damage to property.

These deportation provisions should be applied to campus supporters of terrorism who are international students or staff present on nonimmigrant visas. My colleagues and I at The Heritage Foundation developed a model bill for states to give teeth to these provisions. Each state should require every college that wants to operate in the state to enforce strict anti-terror policies.

The model bill states that upon a first finding of guilt or responsibility, the institution must suspend the international student or end the faculty or staff member’s employment for at least one year. This length of time is enough to invalidate the person’s visa and make the person deportable.

Upon a second finding of guilt or responsibility, the institution must expel a student or fire the employee permanently. Furthermore, if someone is expelled or fired from another institution of higher education under this bill, no receiving institution doing business in the state may take in that person as a student or employee.

All of this is well within state prerogatives. While a university or a state may not actually deport the alien, the model bill also requires that the institution have a policy of immediately reporting a suspension, expulsion or termination to the Department of Homeland Security, by updating the person’s record in the Student Exchange Visitor Information System.

From there, it would be up to the federal government.

One objection to this bill might be that sometimes “terror” is in the eye of the beholder. America has supported revolutionaries against oppressive governments. Even the early shots of the American Revolution could fit the federal law’s definition of terrorism. International students who take America’s side in such conflicts shouldn’t be deported.

The model bill anticipates this complication and makes an exception for cases in which U.S. policy supports rebels fighting against their government.

Supporters of terrorism and those who significantly disrupt their colleges should be shunned if they are U.S. citizens. But if they are nonimmigrant visa holders, they should be deported.

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Adam Kissel is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.