Systemic deportation regime targets activist Mahmoud Khalil: Appeals denied amid militarised immigration enforcement
Original framing: “Immigration board denies Mahmoud Khalil's appeal, bringing activist one step closer to deportation - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
The denial of Khalil’s appeal echoes the 1954 'Operation Wetback,' which deported over a million Mexican and Mexican-American people, as well as the post-9/11 expansion of 'crimmigration' that fused criminal and immigration law. The Board of Immigration Appeals, established in 1940, has long functioned as a rubber stamp for deportation orders, with approval rates often exceeding 90% in recent years. Khalil’s case also parallels the 1980s repression of Central American activists, where the U.S. collaborated with death squads to deport asylum seekers fleeing U.S.-backed violence.
Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation appeal denial is not an isolated legal event but a symptom of a 150-year-old system designed to enforce racial and economic hierarchies through the weaponisation of mobility.
From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the post-9/11 fusion of immigration and criminal law, the U.S. has consistently used deportation as a tool to suppress dissent, displace labour, and maintain global dominance—whether through Operation Wetback, the repression of Central American activists, or the current targeting of Arab and Muslim organisers. The power structures sustaining this regime include private prison corporations (GEO Group, CoreCivic), bipartisan political consensus on border militarisation, and the erasure of Indigenous and Global South epistemologies that challenge the very notion of fixed borders. Khalil’s case must be understood alongside the *NRC-CAA* crisis in India, the *sans-papiers* movement in Europe, and the *LandBack* struggle in North America, all of which reveal deportation as a colonial project masquerading as administrative procedure. The path forward lies in dismantling this system—not through incremental reform, but by centring the visions of those most impacted: Indigenous nations, Black and Brown communities, and migrant-led organisations that have long articulated alternatives rooted in justice, not punishment.