A federal judge in New York will hear arguments Wednesday in the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and recent Columbia graduate who played a major role in pro-Palestinian protests at the university.
Khalil, who is Palestinian and a legal permanent resident of the United States, was arrested by federal immigration agents in New York City on Saturday before being transferred to a facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he is being held. His lawyers are challenging his arrest and detention as they seek to return him to New York.
U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman on Monday temporarily blocked Khalil from being deported, saying he will remain in the United States as the court weighs the challenge to his arrest and detention in Louisiana. This case is separate from any proceeding Khalil will face in immigration court to determine if he should be deported and his green card taken away.
Khalil’s legal team and the Trump administration submitted a joint letter Tuesday evening saying “the parties do not agree on how the matter should be handled,” creating the need for the hearing.
The Trump administration in the letter said it is seeking to transfer or dismiss the habeas corpus petition filed by Khalil’s lawyers, saying the judicial district in New York is not the proper venue and does not have jurisdiction.
Khalil’s counsel claimed in the letter that the “extraordinary circumstances of the case” authorize the court to “grant immediate relief” to Khalil independent of the venue question. They are urging the judge to order their client released from detention in Louisiana and returned to New York, where his legal team is based.
Khalil will not be in attendance on Wednesday, his lawyers said.
In a statement Tuesday night, Khalil’s wife, who is a U.S. citizen and eight months pregnant, said, “Mahmoud has been ripped away from me for no reason at all.”
She said the couple had returned from an Iftar dinner when they were followed and confronted by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement at their Columbia University housing. Iftar is a meal that breaks fasting during Muslims’ Ramadan holy month observations.
ICE agents told her and his attorney, who was on the phone, that they had a warrant to revoke Khalil’s student visa, according to court documents. When the attorney told the agents that he has a green card, they replied that they were there to revoke his green card, his attorneys said.
“We were not shown any warrant and the ICE officers hung up the phone on our lawyer,” his wife, who was not named in court documents, said.
“Within minutes, they had handcuffed Mahmoud, took him out into the street and forced him into an unmarked car,” she said in the statement. “Watching this play out in front of me was traumatizing: It felt like a scene from a movie I never signed up to watch.”
Earlier Tuesday, the State Department and the White House pointed to a provision that allows green card holders to be removed from the country if they present “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
“In such cases, the Secretary of State notifies the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who has the authority to initiate removal charges,” a State Department spokesperson said about the circumstances of Khalil’s arrest.
It is unclear if Khalil faces any immigration charges.
The DHS said in a statement on Khalil’s arrest that he had “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt alleged that Khalil “organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, fliers with the logo of Hamas.”
She said she had the fliers on her desk. “I thought about bringing them into this briefing room to share with all of you, but I didn’t think it was worth the dignity of this room to bring that pro-Hamas propaganda,” she said.
Trump and his administration have not provided evidence of those allegations against Khalil.
A lawyer for Khalil, Samah Sisay, rejected the Trump administration’s claim, saying there is no evidence that his client provided support of any kind to a terrorist organization.
Khalil’s legal team has also said that his arrest was a violation of his free speech rights and that he was targeted because of his viewpoints.
“He was chosen as an example to stifle entirely lawful dissent in violation of the First Amendment,” attorney Amy Greer said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday morning ahead of the hearing that Khalil’s case was not about free speech, “this is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with.”
Adam Cox, a law professor and immigration expert at New York University, said the provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act cited by the administration for Khalil’s arrest has been used only in rare circumstances.
“If the administration began to use that in a widespread way to arrest folks and argue that they’re deportable, that would be an enormous change from historical practice,” he said.
Khali’s arrest has sparked protests on college campuses around the country, as well as outside City Hall and in Washington Square Park in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon.
New York City police officers arrested a dozen protestors Tuesday during protests in downtown Manhattan. Twelve people were taken into custody, and 11 were given summons, with one man being arrested for obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct, officers said.
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