US immigration judge decides detained pro-Palestine student activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported – JURIST
A US immigration judge decided Friday that detained Columbia student activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported after the Trump administration revoked his permanent resident status over his participation in pro-Palestine demonstrations on his campus. However, proceedings petitioning for Khalil’s release in federal court are ongoing.
SPLC lawyer Sabrine Mohammed read a statement from Khalil’s team, which asserted, “Despite the government’s failure to prove that Mahmoud broke any law, the court has decided that lawful permanent residents can have their status revoked for pro-Palestine advocacy.” According to Mohammed, Khalil said at the end of his immigration hearing:
I would like to quote what you said last time ‘There is nothing more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.” Clearly, what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present. Today or in this whole process. This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court 1000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me is afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that Khalil’s presence in the US posed “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” and rendered him removable under the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(C). However, critics assert that such a determination violates Khalil’s right to free speech.
A New York federal judge previously blocked Khalil’s deportation so the court could hear arguments that the detention violated Khalil’s “First Amendment right to freedom of speech, his Fifth Amendment right to due process of law, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.” Federal court proceedings have since been moved to New Jersey, where Judge Michael Farbiarz is weighing whether Khalil should be released.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents first detained Khalil at his Columbia University residential building in March and later transferred him to a privately run detention facility in Louisiana. Khalil was a prominent leader during Columbia students’ monthlong demonstration effort against Israel’s actions in Gaza.
