Federal appeals courtroom judges in Philadelphia on Tuesday expressed skepticism on the Trump administration’s efforts to detain Palestinian Columbia graduate scholar Mahmoud Khalil as soon as extra and deport him, together with its arguments to have the case heard down South.
The federal government has challenged rulings issued by a New Jersey decide, Michael Farbiarz, this summer time, which ordered Khalil launched from ICE custody and located his detention was unjustified and sure unconstitutional.
Arguing earlier than the third Circuit Court docket of Appeals, an lawyer for Trump’s Justice Division, Drew Ensign, stated the decrease courtroom rulings protecting the pro-Palestinian activist out of a detention facility and within the U.S. have been “indefensible” as a result of they have been wrongly determined in a petition filed in New Jersey and never Louisiana, the place he was moved on a Sunday morning in March, hours after his arrest by Homeland Safety brokers at his Columbia-owned condo and earlier than ICE’s on-line tracker had up to date his location.
That place received side-eyed by Trump-appointed Choose Stephanos Bibas, who questioned whether or not the Trump administration anticipated the courts to create “a black hole of no jurisdiction” when ICE’s web site is down.
“He didn’t know, the lawyers didn’t know, they had to prepare for the worst,” Bibas stated. “They did their best. What else do they do, unless we’re creating a black hole of no jurisdiction?”
A lawyer for Khalil, Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel within the ACLU’s Heart for Democracy, stated the federal government had illegally gone after Khalil for protected speech and sought to rig his authorized treatments in its favor, making for a “Kafkaesque” expertise that despatched attorneys on a wild chase round totally different jurisdictions.
President Donald Trump. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Photos)
Legal professionals for the pro-Palestinian activist introduced the underlying habeas corpus case in Manhattan within the hours after his arrest, with no strategy to know he’d shortly been moved from 26 Federal Plaza to a facility in Elizabeth, N.J. The case was quickly transferred to New Jersey.
Ensign argued Tuesday that it ought to have been refiled the place he finally ended up, within the Western District of Louisiana.
Along with arguing that related congressional regulation approved the switch of his case from New York to New Jersey, Khalil’s attorneys requested the third Circuit on Tuesday to affirm Farbiarz’s rulings forbidding the federal government from ordering him deported on international coverage grounds.
Farbiarz’s June rulings deemed illegal the Trump administration’s important motive for detaining the coed activist, which was based mostly on an obscure provision in immigration regulation enabling Secretary of State Marco Rubio to find out his pro-Palestinian advocacy may compromise a “compelling” U.S. international coverage curiosity, that means U.S. help for Israel. Khalil hasn’t been accused of breaking any legal guidelines.
“Why shouldn’t the government have the power to remove people from the country who are harmful to the country?” Choose Thomas Hardiman, an appointee of President George W. Bush, posed to Kaufman at one level, hypothetically.
“It has many means to do that, but it can’t be based on lawful, protected speech, particularly core political speech,” Kaufman stated.
Mahmoud Khalil attends a vigil and protest for Palestine exterior of Columbia College on October 7, 2025 in New York Metropolis. (Adam Grey/Getty Photos)
The coed activist’s attorneys are additionally difficult a cost the federal government tacked on after his detention in help of his deportation, claiming he’d made misrepresentations about his work expertise with the United Nations on his inexperienced card kind.
The habeas case is unfolding alongside Khalil’s immigration courtroom case, by which a decide employed by the Trump administration has ordered him deported, which tristate judges have barred whereas his habeas case performs out.
Khalil, who can also be suing the federal government, has filed a discover of enchantment within the South concerning the rulings by immigration decide Jamee Comans, who signed off on his deportation in September. His Louisiana lawyer, Marc Van Der Hout, on Tuesday stated Comans had “completely ignored” the federal courtroom’s order to not depend on the federal government’s international coverage grounds.
In an announcement Tuesday, Khalil stated the administration’s intentions “couldn’t be more clear: They want to make an example of me to intimidate those speaking out for Palestine across the country.”
Khalil performed a distinguished function in campus protests at Columbia in opposition to Israel’s warfare on Gaza and the college’s funding ties to the Israeli authorities. He has vehemently denied allegations by Trump and his high cupboard members that his help for Palestinians is in any means antisemitic or supportive of terrorism.
The 30-year-old, who was born in a refugee camp for Palestinians in Syria and holds Algerian citizenship, missed the start of his first youngster and his commencement from Columbia’s worldwide affairs program whereas locked up for 104 days in Louisiana.
“The detention here, of course, was for First Amendment speech, Mahmoud’s speech in support of Palestinian lives and rights. But the risk runs beyond that,” Ramzi Kassem stated at a press convention Tuesday.
“It’s a blueprint, it’s a template that can be mobilized against any issue set that this administration disagrees with, whether it’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, this model could be applied to those issues next that this administration happens to disagree with.”
Initially Printed: October 21, 2025 at 5:01 PM EDT
