Student from Egypt facing deportation after threatening to kill Donald Trump on Facebook. https://t.co/axpzl1yp0X pic.twitter.com/SRwA6Y0FIh
— ABC News (@ABC) March 3, 2016
Emad Elsayed, 23, is now facing deportation from the US, according to the BBC. The student is currently being held in an Orange, California, jail despite no criminal charges having been brought against him.
Elsayed arrived in the US last year, hoping to become a certified pilot at the Universal Air Academy in Los Angeles. In February he posted that “If I killed this guy I wouldn’t mind serving a life sentence and the world would thank me.” His post includes a photo of the billionaire, according to Elsayed’s lawyer, Hani Bushra. Elsayed added, “[T]he whole world would thank me for doing that.”
That post, viewed in light of candidate Trump’s numerous verbal attacks on Muslims, has rapidly turned Elsayed’s life upside down.
On February 4 Secret Service agents came to the school and interrogated Elsayed for several hours, asking if he was linked to any terror group. That day the student deleted the post.
The next day agents came to his house and searched his belongings. One week later, Elsayed was arrested on grounds that he had violated the terms of his admission to the US.
"It seems like the government was not able to get a criminal charge to stick on him, so they used the immigration process to have him leave the country," Bushra told the AP.
At the court hearing it was revealed that the pilot school director terminated Elsayed’s I-20 form, a document that provides foreigners with student visa status. Court papers reveal that Khatib was persuaded by authorities to do so.
“They told me that the State Department revoked Mr. Elsayed’s M-1 visa and that it was better for Mr. Elsayed to leave the country,” Khatib wrote in a statement to the court. “[T]he only thing that [was] left [was] to terminate his I-20. Based on their information and their suggestion, I terminated the I-20 of Mr. Elsayed.”
Commenting on the case, Bushra claimed that he has “never seen anything like this.”
A California court ruled that Elsayed must leave the US and not return until he gets a new I-20 form. School director Khatib expressed a willingness to issue a new document, but the process takes several months. Under US law, during this period, Elsayed would be kept in prison.
The man’s fate may be determined on March 4, at the next hearing. The court may release him, if he leaves the country to arrange his documents.
Meanwhile, Elsayed remains in prison, bewildered and disappointed.
"It's just a stupid post. You can find thousands of these every hour on Facebook and the media,'' he told the Associated Press. "I don't know why they would think I am a threat to the national security of the United States just because of a stupid post."
