On Sunday, a suspected radical illegal alien from Egypt allegedly burned several peaceful demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado, while shouting, “Free Palestine.”
The suspect, 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman, entered the United States under the Biden administration but overstayed his visa, Fox News reported. Soliman was supposed to leave the country on Feb. 2, 2023, but the Biden administration granted him a work permit that lasted until March 2025, according to the report.
But this alleged act of terror by an illegal alien who overstayed his visa is not an isolated incident — it is an indictment of a dangerous U.S. immigration system. For decades, the system has prioritized paperwork over principles, admitting individuals not on the basis of shared values or cultural compatibility, but box-checking. Soliman’s reported rampage lays bare what the Trump administration has argued in recent months: Namely, the people of the United States must fundamentally rethink whom they allow into the country.
The efforts by the Trump administration to revoke visas for individuals who espouse anti-American, anti-Western ideologies strike at the core of the problem: Not all cultures are equal, and not all people are compatible. Not everyone who enters “legally” should be allowed to stay, and not all who come here “legally” assimilate to the degree necessary to have a functioning and proper country.
Soliman overstayed his visa by two years. Instead of facing deportation, he was rewarded with a work visa. He’s just one example of a system that has abandoned discretion in favor of blind adherence to “process.”
And Soliman is not alone.
Take Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk, who was detained by immigration officers near Tufts campus and had her student visa revoked because, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, a federal investigation found Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.”
Or Syrian-born Palestinian activist and former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained after the DHS said he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” As reported by the New York Post, “Khalil and Columbia United Apartheid Divest … were among those taking part in the campus takeover [of Columbia University] at the start of the school year.” The coalition, led by Khalil, sought the “total eradication of Western civilization,” according to the outlet.
The Trump administration also detained Badar Khan Suri, whose wife is reportedly the daughter of a senior adviser to Hamas leadership. Suri’s wife has posted Hamas propaganda, including a post declaring “America is the plague,” according to the National Review.
Taken together, these are not isolated issues resulting from our immigration policy — these are the predictable result of a dangerously naive visa system that values process over principle. For too long Americans have repeated the mantra that “as long as they come here legally,” then immigrants should be welcome. But legality is not synonymous with compatibility.
These individuals come from cultures and political systems hostile to the American way of life and Western values, and they carry that hostility with them — whether on campuses or, in Soliman’s case, in the streets of Colorado.
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The result is an immigration system that functions more like a self-destruct button. But as the Trump administration has made clear, a visa is not a right. It is a privilege extended only to those who benefit the country, who share America’s ideals, and who can be trusted to strengthen, not undermine, the republic.
The Founders understood the threat of indiscriminate migration.
John Jay reminded readers in Federalist No. 2 that “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs.” In Jay’s view, America was not meant to be a blank canvas for global ideologies to compete on; it was founded on a clear cultural inheritance that must be preserved.
Thomas Jefferson cautioned that immigrations “will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth,” and that, as a result, they “will infuse into [our legislation] their spirit, warp and bias its direction.”
These warnings now echo louder than ever. The Trump administration’s approach to immigration isn’t rooted in fear, but in fidelity to our safety, our culture, and our future. The attack in Boulder is not an anomaly — it is a warning. And unless we heed it, there will be more such attacks, more campus radicals, and more bloodshed and chaos spilled in the name of imported hatred.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
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