The federal government has sufficient grounds to deport Mahmoud Khalil – the former Columbia University student-activist and green-card holder currently detained in Louisiana — an immigration judge found after a tense hearing at the LaSalle immigration court in Jena on Friday (April 11).
Khalil’s supporters argue that the Trump administration’s actions against him — since he was picked up by federal immigration agents in New York and shipped to LaSalle Parish last month — are a violation of his First Amendment rights.
As The Guardian reported, legal filings from lawyers representing the government do not accuse Khalil of any criminal conduct. Rather, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has deemed Khalil a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests simply because of his support for pro-Palestinian protests, which Rubio labeled “antisemitic,” on Columbia’s campus last year. And under a rarely used provision of federal immigration law, that finding alone made him eligible for removal, Judge Jamee Comans found.
In her decision, Comans said she determined that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “had met its burden” to remove Khalil from the United States. “This court is obligated to apply the laws as written by Congress,” Comans said, adding that immigration judges are without authority to overrule a determination made by the Secretary of State or consider whether that determination was a violation of Khalil’s First Amendment rights.
Over the last several weeks, the Trump administration has targeted several other international students and academics who have participated in pro-Palestinian activities at American universities. Whether or not they’ll be able to secure those deportations is now a matter for the courts to decide. Attorneys for Khalil are also seeking his release from detention in a separate legal battle playing out in a federal court in New Jersey.
Friday’s ruling means that Khalil will remain in detention at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, a privately operated detention center in Jena that is connected to the court, while his attorneys continue to fight his removal through an appeals process.
At the end of the hearing, Khalil stood up and made a statement.
“There is nothing that is more important to this court than due process and fundamental fairness,” he said, paraphrasing remarks Comans had made from the bench.
“Neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process,” Khalil said. “This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family.”
“I just hope that the urgency you deemed fit for me are afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”
Members of Khalil’s legal team planned a Friday afternoon press conference to respond to the ruling.
Representatives for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
After the hearing, immigrants’ rights advocates and clergy who gathered at a news conference presented a statement from Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, who is pregnant with the couple’s first child and could not travel to Louisiana.
“Today’s decision feels like a devastating blow to our family,” Abdalla said. “My husband is a political prisoner who is being deprived of his rights because he believes Palestinians deserve equal dignity and freedom. There is nothing the government can say about my husband that can silence this truth.”
“In less than a month, Mahmoud and I will welcome our first child. Until we are reunited, I will not stop advocating for my husband’s safe return home.”
This story has been updated to include a statement from Noor Abdalla, Mahmoud Khalil’s wife.
