Mosab Hassan Yousef må møte for en Homeland Security-domstol i San Diego 30. juni. Den skal ta stilling til avgjørelsen om å nekte ham asyl i USA. Men USA er forpliktet til ikke å utlevere eller returnere noen som risikerer dødsstraff, og i Yousefs tilfelle er trusselen høyst reell.

Homeland Securitys advokat skylder på at Yousef har ytt støtte til Hamas, men dette var som undercover agent for å skaffe informasjon til Shin Beth.

Yousef er blitt en internasjonal berømmelse. Det ville skade USAs anseelse hvis han ble deportert.

If Mr. Yousef were a security threat, you’d expect that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency would have found reason to detain him. Yet he remains free to travel and even to hit the book-selling circuit. A senior government official tells us that Homeland Security will «not be mounting a stiff defense» of the 2009 decision to deny him asylum, which is at least one burst of common sense.

Mr. Yousef is a native of the West Bank, which is where he would presumably return if he is deported and where Hamas would immediately seek to kill him. Under the Convention Against Torture, the U.S. has an international treaty obligation not to return people to countries where their lives would be at risk. That concern stopped the return to China of the Uighers at Guantanamo, and rightly so. It would dishonor the U.S. to deport a convert in the war on terror because our immigration bureaucracy is too obtuse to make even life and death distinctions.

Deporting ‘Son of Hamas’
The U.S. may send an antiterror agent back to the West Bank.