Khalil lawyers appear before the court on the jurisdiction of the activist case

By Jake Offenhartz

Newark, NJ (AP)-Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyers, a student graduate from Columbia University facing expulsion for his role in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, urged a federal judge on Friday to move the case of their Louisiana client, describing his imprisonment there as a “Kafkaesque” dishes in Louisiana.

“The more we expect, the more cold there is,” said the defense lawyer Baher Azmy. “Everyone knows this affair and wonders if they will be withdrawn from the street to oppose the American foreign policy.”

The parties appeared on Friday morning before a Newark judge, New Jersey, to debate where Khalil’s legal struggle should be released from the Federal Guard should be played.

A lawyer for the Ministry of Justice, August Fnger, auta that the case should be transferred to Louisiana, where Khalil is currently held in a detention center for immigration, “for jurisdictional certainty”.

Justice Michael Farbiarz said he would consider the problems of “delicate” place at stake and will soon make a written decision. He refused to hear an argument in terms of bond of Khalil’s lawyers, stressing the need to settle the question of jurisdiction first.

Khalil’s wife Noor Abdallah, an American citizen who is due to give birth next month, sat in the front of the courtroom, surrounded by supporters. Friday morning, dozens of demonstrators gathered in front of the courthouse, chanting, “Mahmoud Libre” and hoisting panels featuring his face.

“No matter what’s going on in court, what is most important is that we all have to maintain the pressure,” said Ramzi Kassem, one of Khalil’s lawyers after the hearing. “To let this government know that he cannot suppress speech.”

Khalil was arrested on March 8 outside in the hall of an apartment belonging to a university in Manhattan, then transferred overnight to an immigration detention center in New Jersey. A few hours later, he was put on a plane and taken to another immigration establishment in Jena, Louisiana, where he remains.

Azmy, his lawyer, said that the Trump administration’s refusal to postpone the case in New York was based on a “radical reinterpretation” of Habeas Corpus, a legal process that allows individuals to challenge their detention. “They continue to go around the body in an almost Kafkaesque way,” he added.

He also invoked the recent arrest by the Federal Government of Rumeysa Ozturk, a student from Tufts University who was held by immigration agents in the Massachusetts this week, then immediately sent to Louisiana before his lawyers could ensure the order of a judge blocking the transfer.

“If you dismiss and we deposit in Louisiana, before the newspapers touch, it could be in Texas,” said Azmy.

A government lawyer replied that there were no immediate plans to move Khalil out of Louisiana.

The administration of President Donald Trump has increased efforts in recent weeks to arrest and expel student activists who have participated in demonstrations against Israel.

In several cases, the government has quoted a rarely invoked status authorizing the Secretary of State to expel non-citizens whose presence in the country threatens the American interests of foreign policy. Khalil was born in Syria but is a legal American resident married to an American citizen.

The judicial struggle in Newark continues that which started in New York but was transferred through the Hudson river after a judge determined that a federal court of New Jersey was the appropriate jurisdiction of the trial.

Khalil was a negotiator for pro-Palestinian students in Colombia while negotiating with university officials during their tent campus on campus last spring. The university finally called on the police to dismantle the camp and a faction of demonstrators who seized an administrative building.

Khalil was not one of the people arrested during Columbia demonstrations and he was not accused of any crime.

But the administration said that it wanted to expel Khalil because of its leading role in the demonstrations, which, according to them, were equivalent to anti -Semitic support in Hamas, the militant group which controls Gaza. The people involved in the demonstrations led by students deny that their criticism of Israel or the support of Palestinian territorial affirmations is anti -Semitic.

US officials also accused Khalil of not having disclosed part of his professional history on his immigration documents, including work in a British embassy and an internship at the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees.

Other students and university professors across the country were arrested by immigration officials, that their visas had been dismissed or prevented from entering the United States because they have attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support to the Palestinians.

Among them are a Gambian student at Cornell University in the North of New York, an Indian academic at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, Lebanese doctor at the Brown University Faculty in Rhode Island, Turkish student at Tofts University in Massachusetts and a Korean student in Columbia who has lived in the country for 7 years.

Originally published: March 28, 2025 at 10:23 a.m.