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Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Federal judge says effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil likely unconstitutional
A New Jersey federal judge on Wednesday said the federal government's detention of Mahmoud Khalil because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy at Columbia University is 'likely' unconstitutional — delivering a major blow to the Trump administration's crackdown on student protesters. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz did not rule on whether Khalil's free speech rights were violated, but said his lawyers were expected to succeed in their claim an obscure provision of immigration law as applied to Khalil was so vague as to be illegal. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment. Khalil, 30, was arrested on March 8 in his Columbia-owned apartment after the federal government moved to revoke his green card based on a rarely used section of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that empowers the secretary of state to order someone deported if their presence is considered adverse to U.S. foreign policy interests. '(This) case, at least for now, is not about choosing between competing accounts of what happened at Columbia between 2023 and 2025. Or about whether the Petitioner's First Amendment rights are being violated,' Farbiaz wrote. 'Rather, the issue now before the Court has been this: does the Constitution allow the Secretary of State to use (the section) to try to remove the Petitioner from the United States? The Court's answer: likely not.' The Trump administration has framed support for Palestinians — which Khalil's grandparents were — as antisemitic and sympathetic to Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Khalil, however, has denounced the harassment of Jews and denied furthering the activity of Hamas. While an immigration judge in Louisiana has found Khalil deportable based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio's determination, his lawyers separately brought the federal court case to ask Farbiaz to weigh in on the constitutional issues at play. 'Our law asks about an 'ordinary person.' Would he know that (the provision) could be used against him based on his speech inside the United States, however odious it might allegedly have been?' the judge wrote. Again, Farbiarz answered no. Khalil was the first known international student to be taken into ICE detention as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on college protests. In the weeks that followed, multiple federal judges have moved to release student activists on bail. Khalil, however, remains in federal immigration custody in Louisiana, where he was forced to miss the birth of his first child and Columbia graduation. The court asked for more information in order to rule further on his request for bail and if not, his return to New Jersey. 'We will work as quickly as possible to provide the court the additional information it requested supporting our effort to free Mahmoud or otherwise return him to his wife and newborn son,' his legal team wrote in a statement. 'Every day Mahmoud spends languishing in an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, is an affront to justice, and we won't stop working until he is free.' Farbiarz said Khalil's lawyers, however, were not likely to succeed on their argument against a second claim by the Trump administration, which has to do with the paperwork he filled out while applying for permanent residency. In doing so, he denied a motion for a preliminary injunction on the matter. The federal government has claimed Khalil omitted his prior work at United Nations Relief and Works Agency from the application. Farbiarz said he would issue an order later Wednesday outlining next steps. _____
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Federal judge says effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil likely unconstitutional
A New Jersey federal judge on Wednesday said the federal government's detention of Mahmoud Khalil because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy at Columbia University is 'likely' unconstitutional — delivering a major blow to the Trump administration's crackdown on student protesters. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz did not rule on whether Khalil's free speech rights were violated, but said his lawyers were expected to succeed in their claim an obscure provision of immigration law as applied to Khalil was so vague as to be illegal. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment. Khalil, 30, was arrested on March 8 in his Columbia-owned apartment after the federal government moved to revoke his green card based on a rarely used section of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that empowers the secretary of state to order someone deported if their presence is considered adverse to U.S. foreign policy interests. '(This) case, at least for now, is not about choosing between competing accounts of what happened at Columbia between 2023 and 2025. Or about whether the Petitioner's First Amendment rights are being violated,' Farbiaz wrote. 'Rather, the issue now before the Court has been this: does the Constitution allow the Secretary of State to use (the section) to try to remove the Petitioner from the United States? The Court's answer: likely not.' The Trump administration has framed support for Palestinians — which Khalil's grandparents were — as antisemitic and sympathetic to Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Khalil, however, has denounced the harassment of Jews and denied furthering the activity of Hamas. While an immigration judge in Louisiana has found Khalil deportable based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio's determination, his lawyers separately brought the federal court case to ask Farbiaz to weigh in on the constitutional issues at play. 'Our law asks about an 'ordinary person.' Would he know that (the provision) could be used against him based on his speech inside the United States, however odious it might allegedly have been?' the judge wrote. Again, Farbiarz answered no. Khalil was the first known international student to be taken into ICE detention as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on college protests. In the weeks that followed, multiple federal judges have moved to release student activists on bail. Khalil, however, remains in federal immigration custody in Louisiana, where he was forced to miss the birth of his first child and Columbia graduation. The court asked for more information in order to rule further on his request for bail and if not, his return to New Jersey. 'We will work as quickly as possible to provide the court the additional information it requested supporting our effort to free Mahmoud or otherwise return him to his wife and newborn son,' his legal team wrote in a statement. 'Every day Mahmoud spends languishing in an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, is an affront to justice, and we won't stop working until he is free.' Farbiarz said Khalil's lawyers, however, were not likely to succeed on their argument against a second claim by the Trump administration, which has to do with the paperwork he filled out while applying for permanent residency. In doing so, he denied a motion for a preliminary injunction on the matter. The federal government has claimed Khalil omitted his prior work at United Nations Relief and Works Agency from the application. Farbiarz said he would issue an order later Wednesday outlining next steps. _____
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE won't let Mahmoud Khalil hold newborn as Columbia activist remains detained on day of commencement ceremony
NEW YORK — On the day he was to attend his commencement ceremony, federal immigration enforcement officials on Wednesday refused to let Mahmoud Khalil hold his newborn son at a Louisiana detention center, where the Columbia University graduate student remains facing deportation for his participation in pro-Palestinian campus protests. Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, made the 1,400-mile trip from New York City to Jena, La., in the hopes her husband could meet their son for the first time, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials refused the contact visit request, Khalil's legal team told the Daily News. It's been more than two months since Khalil was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security at his Columbia-owned apartment after returning home from an iftar dinner with Abdalla, who was then eight months pregnant. The government has not accused him of breaking the law. Instead, it has cited an obscure provision in a 73-year-old law that empowers the secretary of state to order someone deported if their beliefs oppose 'compelling foreign policy' interests, which in Khalil's case regards the government's position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Trump administration has framed support for Palestinians, which Khalil's grandparents were, as antisemitic and supportive of Hamas, which the U.S. and other Western nations have designated a terrorist organization. A day after he was taken into custody, agents transported Khalil to the South with breakneck speed, setting him up to appeal any court orders to some of the most conservative judges in the U.S. An immigration judge in April ordered him deported, which he's appealing. The student activist's attorneys are separately defending him in a habeas corpus case in New Jersey challenging the lawfulness of his detention. 'ICE has denied us even this most basic human right,' Abdalla, who gave birth to the couple's first child last month, said in a statement Wednesday. 'This is not just heartless. It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse. And I cannot ignore the echoes of this pain in the stories of Palestinian families, torn apart by Israeli military prisons and bombs, denied dignity, denied life.' Khalil's representatives, in a statement, said that ICE's refusal stood in contrast to the agency's directives about preserving parental rights and encouraging contact visits. They noted family visits are allowed at the immigration detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., where Khalil's lawyers say he should be detained rather than in Louisiana. '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,' Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said. Khalil, who completed his studies at Columbia's School of International Affairs in December, would have accepted his diploma this week. Since Khalil was taken into custody, the Trump administration has sought to revoke the visas of thousands of international students across the country, not entirely successfully, in many cases citing students' political beliefs. Acting Columbia University President Claire Shipman was met with loud boos Wednesday during her commencement speech, in which she acknowledged those mourning Khalil's absence. Khalil sought protection from Columbia in the days before he was taken into custody but was ignored, The News previously reported. The Ivy League university has faced criticism for agreeing to substantial oversight demands from the Trump administration — like placing its Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies under supervision and banning masks on campus — after the government pulled $400 million of Columbia's federal funding. Other universities, including Harvard, have vowed to fight the administration in court. During the protests, Khalil, 30, served as a negotiator between student protesters and Columbia administrators. He has vehemently pushed back on descriptions of his advocacy as bigoted or supportive of Hamas, and his lawyers have pointed to what he said publicly on the matter long before his arrest, like to CNN in April 2024, including that fighting hatred against Jews and advocating for Palestinians' right to self-determination are intertwined and an 'integral part' of the movement. According to Reuters, citing figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, which is overseen by Hamas, more than 53,000 Palestinians, a third of them under 18, have been killed by Israeli military bombing in the 18-month war that began after Hamas members stormed Israel's border and killed roughly 1,200 people, taking around 250 as hostages. More than half a million people in the besieged region, which is about half the size of New York City, are facing potentially deadly catastrophic hunger as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government limits access to aid, according to the World Health Organization. _____
24-04-2025
- Politics
ICE did not have warrant when agents detained Mahmoud Khalil: Court filing
Government lawyers say officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) did not have a warrant for Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil's arrest when they took him into custody last month, according to a filing submitted in the case. Khalil's lawyers say the admission contradicts what officers told Khalil and his lawyers at the time of his arrest and in a subsequent arrest report. In the filing, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security said Khalil, a green card holder and permanent legal resident, was served with a warrant once he was brought into an ICE office in New York after his arrest. The officers "had exigent circumstances to conduct the warrantless arrest, it is the pattern and practice of DHS to fully process a respondent once in custody with an I-200 (warrant) as part of that intake processing," government lawyers wrote. DHS claimed its officers were not required to obtain a warrant for Khalil's arrest, in part, because they had reasons to believe it was likely "he would escape before they could obtain a warrant." In the filing, DHS attorneys said agents approached Khalil inside the foyer of his Columbia-owned apartment building and claimed that, while his wife went to retrieve his identification, Khalil told them he was going to leave the scene. "The HSI supervisory agent believed there was a flight risk and arrest was necessary," the filing stated. Khalil's lawyers have pushed back on the claim that he was uncooperative with authorities. In a sworn declaration submitted in court last month, attorney Amy Greer, who was on the phone with Khalil's wife at the time of his arrest, said an agent at the scene told her they had an administrative warrant. "I asked the basis of the warrant, and he said the U.S. Department of State revoked Mahmoud's student visa," Greer said. "When I told Agent Hernandez that Mahmoud does not have a student visa because he is a green card holder and permanent resident in the U.S., he said DHS revoked the green card, too," she wrote in the declaration. Khalil's lawyers say the warrantless arrest is one of the reasons he should be released. "That night, I was on the phone with Mahmoud, Noor, and even the arresting agent," Greer said in a statement. "In the face of multiple agents in plain clothes who clearly intended to abduct him, and despite the fact that those agents repeatedly failed to show us a warrant, Mahmoud remained calm and complied with their orders. Today we now know why they never showed Mahmoud that warrant - they didn't have one. The statement went on to say: "This is clearly yet another desperate attempt by the Trump administration to justify its unlawful arrest and detention of human rights defender Mahmoud Khalil, who is now, by the government's own tacit admission, a political prisoner of the United States." An immigration judge earlier this month ruled that Khalil, a leader of Columbia's encampment protests in the spring of 2024, could be deported on grounds that he threatens foreign policy, as alleged by the Trump administration.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE did not have warrant when agents detained Mahmoud Khalil: Court filing
Government lawyers say officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) did not have a warrant for Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil's arrest when they took him into custody last month, according to a filing submitted in the case. Khalil's lawyers say the admission contradicts what officers told Khalil and his lawyers at the time of his arrest and in a subsequent arrest report. In the filing, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security said Khalil, a green card holder and permanent legal resident, was served with a warrant once he was brought into an ICE office in New York after his arrest. MORE: Columbia University associate of Mahmoud Khalil arrested by DHS The officers "had exigent circumstances to conduct the warrantless arrest, it is the pattern and practice of DHS to fully process a respondent once in custody with an I-200 (warrant) as part of that intake processing," government lawyers wrote. DHS claimed its officers were not required to obtain a warrant for Khalil's arrest, in part, because they had reasons to believe it was likely "he would escape before they could obtain a warrant." In the filing, DHS attorneys said agents approached Khalil inside the foyer of his Columbia-owned apartment building and claimed that, while his wife went to retrieve his identification, Khalil told them he was going to leave the scene. "The HSI supervisory agent believed there was a flight risk and arrest was necessary," the filing stated. Khalil's lawyers have pushed back on the claim that he was uncooperative with authorities. In a sworn declaration submitted in court last month, attorney Amy Greer, who was on the phone with Khalil's wife at the time of his arrest, said an agent at the scene told her they had an administrative warrant. "I asked the basis of the warrant, and he said the U.S. Department of State revoked Mahmoud's student visa," Greer said. "When I told Agent Hernandez that Mahmoud does not have a student visa because he is a green card holder and permanent resident in the U.S., he said DHS revoked the green card, too," she wrote in the declaration. MORE: Columbia University associate of Mahmoud Khalil arrested by DHS Khalil's lawyers say the warrantless arrest is one of the reasons he should be released. "That night, I was on the phone with Mahmoud, Noor, and even the arresting agent," Greer said in a statement. "In the face of multiple agents in plain clothes who clearly intended to abduct him, and despite the fact that those agents repeatedly failed to show us a warrant, Mahmoud remained calm and complied with their orders. Today we now know why they never showed Mahmoud that warrant - they didn't have one. The statement went on to say: "This is clearly yet another desperate attempt by the Trump administration to justify its unlawful arrest and detention of human rights defender Mahmoud Khalil, who is now, by the government's own tacit admission, a political prisoner of the United States." An immigration judge earlier this month ruled that Khalil, a leader of Columbia's encampment protests in the spring of 2024, could be deported on grounds that he threatens foreign policy, as alleged by the Trump administration. ICE did not have warrant when agents detained Mahmoud Khalil: Court filing originally appeared on
