America “means nothing” unless it welcomes all migrants and their versions of justice, says a Fourth of July message from a Muslim migrant now facing deportation for pro-Hamas advocacy at Columbia University and for alleged migration fraud.
“I came to America like so many immigrants before me, chasing opportunity, stability, prosperity, and justice,” said Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Islamic advocate whose many progressive lawyers have appealed his deportation case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
He continued:
I fight because I believe America can be what it promises. That promise means nothing if it doesn’t also mean freedom and justice for everyone [emphasis added]. Happy Independence Day, America.
Other prominent immigrants are pushing the same claim that America is promised for migrants.
On July 3, for example, New York City’s ethnic Indian, Muslim immigrant Mayor Zohran Mamdani used his Fourth of July speech to portray migrants — not American citizens — as the drivers of American history. “What power each of us holds to bring America ever closer to the greatness so many [migrants] have seen when they looked upon these shores,” he declared.
“The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional, because here nothing is fixed into place,” he said 250 years after the Declaration of Independence fixed America’s ideals in history.
Similarly, Indian immigrant Rep. Pramilla Jayapal (D-WA) retweeted on July 4 a 2017 article where she had written, “What makes America great is our commitment to our values of inclusivity and opportunity for all. ”
“Diversity … is our greatest strength,” wrote Jayapal, who will likely chair the House immigration committee once the Democrats regain a majority.
In a July 25 article, she promised to convert Americans’ nation to a land of opportunity for all migrants.
America was a promise, not a guarantee, from our founders. Now more than ever, protecting that promise depends on each of us. As I do this work, I am lifted and strengthened by the courage and resilience of so many that I have met along the way: the African immigrants who walked across deserts in bare feet to escape war, the undocumented grandmothers who risked everything for a better life for the next generations, and the many Dreamers who dared to demand more of their country. Each of them is a powerful reminder of the responsibility I felt, standing at my naturalization ceremony, waving the American flag, to do everything I could [emphasis added] to defend that promise [for migrants].
Immigration lawyers also portray the Declaration of Independence as a promise of welcome for migrants, regardless of migration’s deep economic, civic, and political damage to ordinary Americans.
In contrast, President Donald Trump showed on July 3 how America is built on Americans’ culture that migrants must accept: “The identity of a nation is the destiny of a nation, and America has a destiny like no other, because we are a people like no other.”
“For whatever reason, that’s just the way it is,” he added.
Americans have ambivalent and often contradictory views toward migration but overwhelmingly expect new migrants to assimilate into America’s welcoming culture. “America’s greatness was never its ability to attract immigrants. It was its ability to turn them into Americans,” author Chart Westcott wrote July 3 in The American Conservative.
But many migrants keep and promote their own foreign culture that often contradicts Americans’ civic norms and the ideals in the Declaration of Independence.
For example, Khalil has a U.S. citizen child that he named Deen from his marriage to Noor Abdalla, who grew up in an imported Islamic community in Michigan. In April 2025, Abdalla wrote about Khalil:
I could not be more proud of you, Mahmoud. You embody everything I ever hoped for in a partner and the father of my children. What more could I ask for as a role model for our children than a man who, with unwavering conviction, stands up for the liberation of his [Muslim] people [in historic Palestine].
Mamdani’s Muslim wife flew to Spain before the 250th anniversary of Independence Day to attend a Muslim-themed event.
A very high percentage of Americans oppose Khalil’s pro-Islamic political advocacy, which has been adopted by left-wing activists in New York City and elsewhere.
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