NEWARK, N.J. – Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student facing deportation for his role in pro-Palestinian campus protests, urged a federal judge on Friday to free their client from an immigration detention center in Louisiana, describing his imprisonment there as a “Kafkaesque” ploy to chill free speech.
“The longer we wait, the more chill there is,” defense attorney Baher Azmy said. “Everyone knows about this case and is wondering if they’re going to get picked off the street for opposing U.S. foreign policy.”
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The parties appeared Friday morning before a judge in Newark, New Jersey, to debate where Khalil’s legal fight to be released from federal custody should play out.
An attorney for the Department of Justice, August Flentje, wants the dispute litigated in Louisiana, where Khalil was taken after his arrest, “for jurisdictional certainty.”
U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said he would consider the “tricky” venue issues at play and issue a written decision soon. He declined to hear an argument for bail from Khalil’s attorneys, pointing to the need to settle the jurisdictional issue first.
Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdallah, an American citizen who is due to give birth next month, sat in the front row of the courtroom, surrounded by supporters. Scores of demonstrators gathered outside the courthouse on Friday morning, chanting, “Free Mahmoud,” and hoisting signs featuring his face.
“No matter what happens in court, what’s most important is for all of us to keep up the pressure,” said Ramzi Kassem, one of Khalil’s lawyers, after the hearing. “To let this government know that it cannot suppress speech.”
President Donald Trump’s administration has, in recent weeks, ramped up efforts to arrest and deport student activists who participated in protests against Israel.
Khalil served as a negotiator for pro-Palestinian Columbia students as they bargained with university officials over an end to their campus tent encampment last spring. The university ultimately called in the police to dismantle the encampment and a faction of protesters who seized an administration building.
Khalil was not among the people arrested in the Columbia protests and he has not been accused of any crime.
But the Trump administration has said it wants to deport Khalil because of his prominent role in the protests, which they say amounted to antisemitic support for Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. The government cited a seldom-invoked statute authorizing the secretary of state to deport noncitizens whose presence in the country threatens U.S. foreign-policy interests. Khalil was born in Syria but is a legal U.S. resident.
People involved in the student-led protests deny that their criticism of Israel or support of Palestinian territorial claims is antisemitic.
U.S. officials also have accused Khalil of failing to disclose some of his work history on his immigration paperwork, including work at a British embassy and an internship with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
He was arrested March 8 in New York, then transferred overnight to an immigration detention facility in New Jersey. Hours later, he was put on a plane and whisked to a different immigration facility in Jena, Louisiana.
Azmy, one of Kahlil's lawyers, said the Trump administration's refusal to move the case back to the metropolitan New York City area rested on a “radical reinterpretation” of Habeas corpus, a legal process that allows individuals to challenge their detention. “They keep passing around the body in an almost Kafkaesque way,” he added.
He also invoked the federal government's recent arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was detained by immigration agents in Massachusetts this week and then immediately sent to Louisiana before her attorneys could secure a judge's order blocking the transfer.
“If you dismiss and we file in Louisiana, before the papers hit, he could be in Texas,” said Azmy.
An attorney for the government replied that there were no immediate plans to move Khalil out of Louisiana.
Other university students and faculty across the country have been arrested by immigration officials, had their visas revoked or been prevented from entering the U.S. because they attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians.
Among them are a Gambian student at Cornell University in upstate New York, an Indian scholar at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., a Lebanese doctor at Brown University’s medical school in Rhode Island and a Korean student at Columbia who has lived in the country since she was 7.
