Mahmoud Khalil Can Self-Deport If He Wants to Hold Newborn: White House
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
After Mahmoud Khalil was denied a request to hold his newborn son during a family visit at an immigration detention center where he's being held, the Trump administration said he should self-deport instead.
The response, from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin came after Khalil's lawyers filed an appeal in federal court alleging his request for a "contact visit" to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the contractor that runs the detention center had been denied out of hand.
Newsweek asked DHS why it was denying Khalil's request to hold his baby and how this fit with overall policy.
"Mahmoud Kahlil should use the CBP Home app to self-deport," McLaughlin responded. "The United States is offering illegal aliens $1,000 apiece and a free flight to self-deport now, which Kahlil can take advantage of by scheduling his departure through CBP Home. Parents, who are here illegally, can take control of their departure with the CBP Home App."
McLaughlin "and her boss, Kristi Noem, should try reading the Constitution," said Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the ACLU and a member of Khalil's legal team when reached by Newsweek for a response. "They might learn something."
Policies for family contact visits vary but are generally permitted for those in federal detention, with the federal Bureau of Prisons encouraging them to maintain morale and familial ties. Khalil is being held at a detention facility run by a private company that is not affiliated with the BOP.
People protesting in support of Palestinians hold a sign for Mahmoud Khalil (inset) across the street from the main gates of Columbia University, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in New York.
People protesting in support of Palestinians hold a sign for Mahmoud Khalil (inset) across the street from the main gates of Columbia University, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in New York.
AP Photo/Heather Khalifa/Ted Shaffrey, File
Why It Matters
Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and green card holder, is currently in ICE detention in Louisiana, pending further court hearings challenging his potential deportation and ongoing detention. He has been accused by the White House of activities aligned with Hamas, though he is yet to be charged with a crime.
His case has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration's hard-line immigration enforcement, with the White House arguing his legal status does not afford him a blanket right to be in the country. Critics say the case is a flagrant abuse of "due process" rights codified in the Constitution.
What To Know
On Wednesday, Khalil's legal team filed a new request to the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, which is overseeing his habeas corpus case regarding his detention by federal agents on March 8 in New York.
That request asked for Judge Michael Farbiarz to intervene, following an email exchange between Khalil's team and the ICE detention center in Jena, Louisiana, in which private prison company GEO Group, which runs the site as a contractor for ICE, denied the below request.
"I am writing again to ask you both...for an exception to [the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center's] standing no-contact social visitation policy," one of Khalil's lawyers said in a May 20 email to a facility administrator and two others whose email addresses were redacted. "We come to you requesting your assistance in uniting a new father with his less than one-month old first-born child, who, as you know, was born while his father was detained."
An email sent by Mahmoud Khalil's legal team requesting a contact visit in Jena, Louisiana on May 20, 2025.
An email sent by Mahmoud Khalil's legal team requesting a contact visit in Jena, Louisiana on May 20, 2025.
Court Filing
The denial – one line reaffirming a no-contact visit for Khalil, his wife, and their son – followed days of back-and-forth between the attorneys and the detention center.
Khalil's wife, Noor Abdalla, gave birth without him a few weeks after his arrest in the lobby of their New York City apartment building. The Trump administration is seeking to deport him following his participation in pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia's campus last year.
Abdalla had already travelled to Louisiana for the visit, ahead of an immigration court hearing for Khalil Thursday.
DHS' response suggesting self-deportation through the CBP Home app could be difficult for a person in ICE detention, where personal devices are not allowed and only limited phone calls with attorneys and family are permitted.
What People Are Saying
Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement Wednesday: "The government chose to arrest and detain Mahmoud thousands of miles away in the Louisiana detention gulags to punish him for his support for Palestinian human rights, and is doubling down on their retaliatory punishment by denying him the most elementary human contact with his wife and child. ICE leadership and elected officials must act to remedy this grotesque and unnecessary inhumanity for Mahmoud – and for all others."
Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said in a statement: "Mahmoud Khalil deserves to hold his son. Noor Abdalla deserves to see her husband meet their child. And we, as a country, deserve better than policies rooted in cruelty."
What's Next
Khalil is appearing for a hearing in Louisiana Thursday morning. An immigration judge previously declared him removable from the U.S.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump Admin Surrenders to Judges and Returns Abrego Garcia
The Maryland father mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration is back in the United States. Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed Kilmar Abrego Garcia had landed on Friday, and he will now face criminal charges for allegedly transporting illegal immigrants. 'He was a smuggler of humans, and women, and children,' she said. Abrego Garcia's return appears to be yet another about-face by Donald Trump after the White House insisted he would not be allowed back into the country. The stunning move is being seen as a way out for the administration after being hauled over the coals by judges for ignoring court orders. The indictment, filed in Nashville, Tennessee, accuses the 29-year-old of a conspiracy to move undocumented immigrants from Texas to other parts of the country. Abrego Garcia, who lived with his wife and children in Maryland, has been accused of being involved in smuggling thousands of foreign citizens from Mexico and Central America. Some were said to be children. The married father was deported to El Salvador's top security CECOT prison in March as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Democratic Party lawmakers have blasted the deportation after a Department of Justice official admitted Abrego Garcia was removed from the country by mistake. Donald Trump and White House advisers, including Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, insisted that the Maryland resident was a member of the violent MS-13 crime gang. His family and lawyers have denied that's the case. Miller claimed that if Abrego Garcia ever returned to America, he would be arrested and kicked out of the country a second time. The federal filing was reportedly entered under seal in Tennessee last month. In a statement to ABC News, Abrego Garcia's attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said they are determined to get a fair trial. 'From the beginning, this case has made one thing painfully clear: The government had the power to bring him back at any time. Instead, they chose to play games with the court and with a man's life,' he said. 'We're not just fighting for Kilmar, we're fighting to ensure due process rights are protected for everyone. Because tomorrow, this could be any one of us, if we let power go unchecked, if we ignore our Constitution.' NBC News reported that a federal grand jury has indicted Abrego Garcia on two counts, conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gains and the unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gains. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said if convicted, Abrego Garcia will be sentenced to a U.S. prison. He will serve that sentence and then be removed from the U.S. The administration acknowledged in court papers that a mistake had been made and that a 2019 court order shielding Abrego Garcia from deportation had been violated. He feared persecution from gangs if he returned to El Salvador. But the White House insisted the father's gang affiliations should bar him from the U.S. in spite of the error. Abrego Garcia has been in the country since illegally entering at the age of 13 and has been living in Maryland for 13 years. He has one child with his wife, Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Why Trump's threat to pull Columbia's accreditation is so ominous
I suspect that even casual followers of the news have heard about the ongoing battles between the government and higher education. First there's House Republicans' plan to increase taxes on university endowments, and now President Donald Trump's administration is threatening Columbia University's accreditation. As a college president, I know what these threats mean, but I've found myself having to explain them to folks who aren't higher ed nerds like me. Accreditation, I tell them, is what people Gen X or older might think of like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, but for colleges and universities, accreditation is not just something that's nice for a university to have; it's something a university needs to have if it expects to offer any kind of financial aid to its students. The vast majority of college students receive some form of financial aid, so even the wealthiest of institutions understand that accreditation is important. That's why it's so ominous that the Trump administration, which claims that Columbia insufficiently handled expressions of antisemitism on its campus, contacted the university's accreditor alleging that the university is no longer eligible to be accredited. According to a statement from the Department of Education, Columbia 'failed to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment on Columbia's campus and consequently denied these students' equal access to educational opportunities to which they are entitled under the law.' Columbia issued a statement that said it is 'deeply committed to combating antisemitism on our campus,' that it's 'aware of the concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights today,' and that it has 'addressed those concerns directly' with its accreditor. Prior to the first Trump administration, there were seven regional accreditors that were responsible for assuring that most colleges and universities operate at standards that signify what they do is done well and in order. Each accrediting agency developed a set of standards requiring that an institution, generally in five- to 10-year intervals, conduct a self-study to ensure that it continues to meet them. The institution must then submit a report to its accrediting agency. Then, a team of colleagues reviews the materials, and depending on the agency and its timelines, that team or another visits the campus to certify that what was submitted is accurate and that the institution is in good standing and keeps its 'seal of approval.' During the first Trump administration, the practice of regional accreditors as the primary determinants of accreditation was changed. All accreditors are viewed as national accreditors, including some with more of a niche focus like Christian colleges, that have the same power to certify that an institution is eligible for federal financial aid. This provides several options now for schools to be accredited, and more than 30 accreditors exist today. Accreditation is essentially about continuous improvement through constant assessment. Even the peer review process is designed not to simply determine if the standards are met, but if they are not, to identify weaknesses and provide feedback for improvement to meet those standards. While not meant to be a punitive process, the various agencies do have a series of steps in place to heighten an institution's urgency to address any deficiencies. There are generally levels of sanctions that an institution might receive, from a monitoring report to show progress made on deficiencies, to a public warning, which allows anyone to know what the institution must do to improve, and finally some kind of probationary period in which significant deficiencies must be corrected. While rare, accrediting agencies can cease to recognize an institution for failure to meet the standards set. It would take several years, though, for a school to get to the place where it loses accreditation — and even if accreditation is lost, most agencies have processes in place that allow schools to appeal that decision. There are multiple examples of schools successfully appealing a loss of accreditation and working their way back into good standing. When the Trump administration contacted the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which accredits Columbia, it simply began a process to review the charges. Different commissions might handle these notices in different ways. Under the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, the accrediting agency I'm most familiar with, 'unsolicited information,' such as a letter from the federal government or a local news article covering a negative event, could begin such a review. But accreditation is a process, so even a letter from the administration would not create an immediate negative action as accreditors engage in a thoughtful and deliberate process to verify compliance with the standards. Again, the goal is continuous improvement, not punishment. If a school is out of compliance, the accreditor will take action. But this would occur only after working closely with the institution, giving it a chance to correct course on its own. Columbia, in the short term at least, doesn't appear to be at any risk of not being able to provide its students financial aid. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Jesse Watters Trots Out Dehumanizing Analogy for Kilmar Abrego Garcia's Return
Fox News host Jesse Watters criticized the Trump administration for bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States, saying the wrongly deported man's return was like taking a rental car to the car wash. 'I don't think they should have brought him back,' Watters said on The Five, shortly after news broke that Abrego Garcia is facing two counts of human smuggling in Tennessee. 'This is a national security situation. The guy is a designated terrorist. He belongs somewhere else. What are we going to do? We're going to spend two years and $50 million trying this guy and imprisoning this guy, feeding him, giving him healthcare, and then flying him home?' Watters said incredulously. 'This is like renting a car and taking it to a car wash before you return it,' he added. 'What's the point? It's not your car, and it's going back anyway.' Attorney General Pam Bondi said Abrego Garcia would first serve time in a U.S. prison if convicted, then be removed from the country once again. Garcia had been held in El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center even after the Trump administration admitted his deportation was an 'administrative error.' When the Supreme Court ordered that it 'facilitate' his return, the White House insisted that it was powerless to do so. Friday's events proved the administration was lying, The Five co-host Jessica Tarlov said Friday. '[White House Press Secretary] Karoline Leavitt—as well as other members of the administration, from the president himself to Kristi Noem—lied to the American people when they said they couldn't bring him back,' Tarlov said. 'Well, I guess you could get him back.' Andrew Rossman, a lawyer for Abrego Garcia, made the same point. 'Today's action proves what we've known all along—that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,' he told The New York Times. 'It's now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees to all persons.' Abrego Garcia was sent to Tennessee, where the indictment was filed in May and unsealed Friday. The Times reports that an imprisoned man's information about Abrego Garcia moved the case forward. Prosecutors couldn't agree how to proceed, however, and one ended up resigning.
