Attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia College graduate scholar who the Trump administration is looking for to deport for protesting in opposition to Israel’s bombing of Gaza, are set to go up in opposition to the federal government in New Jersey on Friday.
It’s been nearly three weeks since Khalil, 30, a lawful U.S. resident, was taken into custody by Homeland Safety brokers after returning house to his Columbia-owned residence from dinner together with his closely pregnant spouse on March 8.
The Trump administration has focused the scholar from Columbia’s Faculty of Worldwide and Public Affairs for his participation in campus protests final yr in opposition to Israeli navy exercise and the college’s funding ties to the Israeli regime, wherein he primarily acted as a negotiator between college students and college workers. The inexperienced card holder who had been set to graduate in Might grew up in a refugee camp for Palestinians in Syria and has been legally residing within the U.S. since December 2022.
Khalil, whose arrest has set off widespread protests and concern from free speech advocates on either side of the political aisle, hasn’t been charged with a criminal offense. As an alternative, in an unprecedented use of an obscure provision within the regulation granting sweeping deportation powers to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the federal government alleges his advocacy for Palestinian civilians may have unfavorable international coverage penalties.
Protestors collect in Foley Sq. to protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil Monday, March 10, 2025. (Barry Williams/ New York Every day Information)
Friday’s listening to is predicted to handle the federal government’s renewed effort to get Khalil’s habeas corpus case — which challenges the legality of his detention — moved to Louisiana.
Inside hours of his arrest, brokers introduced Khalil from decrease Manhattan to a non-public detention heart in Elizabeth, N.J. The next day, a Sunday, they put him on a airplane to the Jena, Louisiana detention heart greater than 1,000 miles away.
The federal government has claimed that brokers took Khalil from New Jersey to Louisiana as a result of there have been mattress bugs on the former facility. Khalil’s attorneys say it was an effort to restrict any challenges to his detention to one of the vital conservative districts within the U.S. and that brokers have been offering real-time updates to the White Home, signaling the orders got here from the highest.
They’ve two motions pending, one looking for his instant launch so he may be together with his spouse when she offers beginning, which she’s anticipated to do “imminently,” and one other requesting that he be transported again to a facility within the tristate space.
Final week, Manhattan federal decide Jesse Furman transferred Khalil’s case from New York to New Jersey, discovering it was the proper jurisdiction as that was the place Khalil was when his attorneys filed it.
After initially getting the case, Furman additionally prohibited the federal government from eradicating Khalil from the nation whereas his authorized issues performed out, which was reaffirmed by the New Jersey decide now dealing with it, Michael Farbiarz. Khalil has an immigration case individually taking part in out in Louisiana.
The Trump administration has continued arguing that Louisiana is the one district with jurisdiction. In latest filings, the federal government injected extra allegations into its authorized arguments in furtherance of Khalil’s deportation, together with claims he’d withheld info on his inexperienced card software about working for the British embassy in Lebanon, which the scholar’s attorneys say are unfaithful.
“The government is grasping at straws to try and recast what it did, when it’s absolutely clear that this entire endeavor is simply retaliation against him for speaking on an issue of public concern and an attempt to try and silence other people in the same position,” mentioned Bobby Hodgson, Assistant Authorized Director of the NYCLU.
The Trump administration has focused a number of extra college students since Khalil, accusing them with out proof of being antisemitic and supporting Hamas by advocating for Palestinians trapped within the war-torn area.
President Donald Trump. (Pool through AP, file)
ICE brokers took Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral scholar at Tufts College, off the road with out warning on Wednesday. Ozturk was seemingly focused for writing an op-ed criticizing her college for refusing to acknowledge assist for Palestinians from college students and school.
At a press convention Thursday, Rubio appeared to recommend that noncitizens within the U.S. don’t have a proper to free speech.
“We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses,” Rubio mentioned Thursday. “You decide to go and do that, we’re going to take it away.”
