President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio portrayed the arrest as a defense of Jewish people, condemning the antisemitism of the Columbia protests. “The United States has zero tolerance for foreign visitors who support terrorists,” Rubio posted on X. The official White House account was more blunt: “SHALOM, MAHMOUD,” it posted.

But Rubio’s legal pretense for holding Khalil relies on a provision from an obscure law written by an antisemite that targeted Jewish immigrants — including Holocaust survivors.

The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, known formally as the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952, empowers the secretary of state to expel foreign nationals who pose a threat to the United States. While the government has not yet explained to a judge precisely why Khalil meets that qualification, the president’s spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said that Khalil had “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 fliers with the logo of Hamas.” Leavitt claimed to be in possession of such fliers but said she “didn’t think it was worth the dignity” of sharing them with reporters and has not provided further evidence.

“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

All Americans should be concerned about that. But American Jews should be deeply alarmed.

The McCarran-Walter Act was designed primarily to detain, deport and otherwise bar entry visas to communists. But while it did not mention Jews specifically, its practical function barred the immigration of many European Jews from entering the United States. Its author, Pat McCarran, a conservative Democrat from Nevada, was a dogged antisemite who likely intended the legislation to keep the United States safe not just from communists, but from Jews.

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