DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
Donald Trump’s administration is pushing to deport Khalil over his participation in pro-Palestine university protests.
A United States immigration judge has ruled that the deportation case against Mahmoud Khalil can proceed, a month after the Columbia University graduate student was detained over his involvement in pro-Palestine protests.
Judge Jamee Comans made the determination on Friday at the end of a nearly two-hour hearing.
Khalil – a US permanent resident – can appeal the ruling.
The case has drawn widespread scrutiny as rights advocates accuse President Donald Trump’s administration of cracking down on free speech and pro-Palestine activism under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism.
The administration is trying to deport Khalil under a rarely used provision of an immigration law that gives the secretary of state power to remove any non-citizen whose presence in the US is deemed to have “adverse foreign policy consequences”.
The government has not charged Khalil – who is a US permanent resident – with a crime.
In a two-page letter submitted to the court and Khalil’s lawyers, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote that the 30 year old should be removed for his role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States”.
Rubio’s letter did not accuse Khalil of breaking any laws, but he said that his department can revoke an immigrant’s legal status even where their beliefs, associations or statements are “otherwise lawful”.
But Khalil’s supporters say he engaged in peaceful protests against Columbia University’s ties to the Israeli military as part of the wave of campus demonstrations that swept the country last year.
Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of Khalil’s lawyers, told reporters on Thursday that Rubio’s letter “is a sort of tacky, Soviet-style diktat that’s equal parts empty and chilling”.
Reporting from outside the courtroom in Jena, Louisiana on Friday, Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi said Khalil addressed the court during the hearing.
“He said, ‘Nothing is more important than due process and fundamental fairness, neither of these principles were present. This is why the Trump administration sent me to this court, thousands of miles from my family’,” Rattansi reported.
Khalil has been held by the government since March 8, when he was arrested late at night by immigration enforcement agents in front of his pregnant wife, who is a US citizen.
He was then transferred to two different facilities without his family or lawyers being notified.
