During a portion of an interview that was aired on Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” Vice President JD Vance responded to a question on whether he is concerned that a Democratic administration might use the same provision the Trump administration is using to attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil against conservatives by stating that the provision couldn’t be used against U.S. citizens, and “a green card holder, even if I might like that green card holder, doesn’t have an indefinite right to be in the United States of America,” and “this is not fundamentally about free speech…it’s about national security, but it’s also, more importantly, about who do we, as an American public, decide gets to join our national community? And if the secretary of state and the president decide this person shouldn’t be in America and they have no legal right to stay here, it’s as simple as that.”
Host Laura Ingraham asked, “There’s controversy over the decision to try to deport that former Columbia student, Mahmoud Khalil, over national security concerns that were determined to be in place by Marco Rubio. Are you, at all, worried that a future Democrat administration would use that same provision to try to deport conservative students studying here in the United States?”
Vance answered, “Well, if it was an American citizen, it would be a different conversation. If a Democrat tried to do that to an American citizen, of course, that would be a problem. But, Laura, a green card holder, even if I might like that green card holder, doesn’t have an indefinite right to be in the United States of America, right? American citizens have different rights from people who have green cards, from people who have student visas. And so, my attitude on this is, this is not fundamentally about free speech. And, to me, yes, it’s about national security, but it’s also, more importantly, about who do we, as an American public, decide gets to join our national community? And if the secretary of state and the president decide this person shouldn’t be in America and they have no legal right to stay here, it’s as simple as that.”
Vance also stated, “I think we’ll certainly see some people who get deported on student visas if we determine that they don’t — that it’s not in the best interest of the United States to have them in our country.”
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