N.J. judge denies feds' bid to move Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil's case to La.

Yahoo

01-04-2025

A federal judge in New Jersey on Tuesday denied the government's motion to dismiss Palestinian Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil's habeas corpus case, rejecting an effort to get it moved to Louisiana.
In a 67-page decision, Judge Michael Farbiarz found that he had jurisdiction over the matter that the Trump administration has aggressively argued should be heard in Louisiana. Khalil's lawyers maintained that the government wanted the case moved there, so that any challenges would be directed toward the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, considered among the country's most conservative.
Khalil, a green card holder, was swept up by Homeland Security agents on March 8 after returning home to his Columbia-owned apartment from an Iftar dinner with his wife, who is on the verge of giving birth to their first child. He played a leading role in campus protests last year against Israeli bombing in Gaza and Columbia's investment ties to Israel's government, acting as a mediator between student protesters and university administrators.
Agents took him downtown to 26 Federal Plaza and hours later to a private detention facility in Elizabeth, N.J. They put him on a plane heading down south the following day. He has since been held at a detention center in Jena, La., where he has said he is sleeping in cold facilities without a blanket.
Instead of accusing Khalil of breaking U.S. laws, the Trump administration has cited an obscure provision in a 1952 law that empowers Secretary of State Marco Rubio to order someone deported if their presence in the country could pose unfavorable consequences for U.S. foreign policy, which the feds claim his advocacy for Palestinians does. Khalil was the first of several students in the U.S. to be targeted at breakneck speed this month.
Shortly after his arrest, Khalil's lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition, which challenges the legality of someone's detention, in Manhattan, where the feds had told his wife and lawyers he would be. A federal judge in Manhattan later transferred the case to New Jersey, his location at the time the petition was brought.
The government sought to convince the courts that New Jersey never had jurisdiction over the case and that a habeas corpus petition could only be targeted toward officials at a Louisiana detention facility, which Farbiarz rejected — finding the law required the petition filed in New York on March 9 at 4:40 a.m. must be treated as if it had been filed in New Jersey.
'Under habeas law, jurisdiction in a particular district is established when a petitioner is physically present in the district at the same moment a petition is filed there on his behalf,' Farbiarz wrote.
'That confluence happened here.'
Representatives for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a statement, Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she was relieved by the ruling.
'As the countdown to our son's birth begins and I inch closer and closer to my due date, I will continue to strongly advocate for Mahmoud's freedom and for his safe return home, so he can be by my side to welcome our first child,' Abdalla said.
A lawyer for Khalil, Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, echoed Abdalla's comments.
'We are grateful the court wisely understood that the government cannot try to manipulate the jurisdiction of the United States courts in a transparent attempt to shield their unconstitutional – and, frankly, chilling – behavior,' Azmy said.
'We look forward to the next phase of this case, which is to get Mahmoud out of detention and into the arms of his family, and then to prove the Trump administration's attempted deportation of Mahmoud and others is nothing but unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech.'