A flight student from Egypt is facing deportation from the US after allegedly posting on Facebook he was willing to kill Donald Trump and claiming the world would thank him.
Emadeldin Elsayed was arrested by immigration authorities last month at the Los Angeles-area flight school he attends and they are now trying to deport him, according to lawyer Hani Bushra.
The 23-year-old has not been charged with a crime.
Mr Bushra said Elsayed, who is being held in jail in Orange, California, is devastated at seeing his dreams of becoming a pilot dashed over what he has acknowledged was a foolish social media post.
An immigration court hearing will determine whether Mr Elsayed is deported.
Mr Bushra said: "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.
"The rhetoric is particularly high in this election, and I just feel he got caught up in the middle."
Mr Trump, the front runner to secure the Republican nomination, has sparked controversy with tough talk on immigration, and called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.
US Secret Service agents interviewed Elsayed in February after he posted a photo of Mr Trump on Facebook and wrote he was willing to serve a life sentence for killing the billionaire.
The agents returned days later and told him federal prosecutors had declined to charge him, but that his visa to attend flight school had been revoked. He was then arrested by immigration authorities.
Elsayed said he wrote the message because he was angered by Mr Trump's comments about Muslims, but said he immediately regretted it.
"It's just a stupid post. You can find thousands of these every hour on Facebook and the media," he told the Associated Press news agency.
"I don't know why would they think I am a threat to national security of the United States just because of a stupid post."
He added that the agent who interviewed him mentioned the shooting by a Muslim husband and wife in San Bernardino, California, and the 9/11 terror attacks.
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