Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is seen in a pro-Palestinian camp on the campus of Columbia University in New York on April 29, 2024.
Ted Shaffrey / AP
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Ted Shaffrey / AP
An immigration judge in Louisiana judged on Friday that activist Mahmoud Khalil could be expelled.
Khalil, who, as a graduate student from Columbia University, directed Pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year, was detained last month after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had determined that Khalil’s activism was anti-Semitic and that allowing him to stay in the country underlies an objective of American policy to fight against anti-Semitism in anti-Semitism world.
During a hearing at the Distribution Center in Louisiana where Khalil is detained, J. Jamee Comans said that she did not have the power to question Rubio’s determination.
After the decision, Khalil told the judge: “I would like to quote what you said the last time that there is nothing more important for this court than the rights of the regular procedure and fundamental equity. Clearly what we have witnessed today, none of these principles was present today or in this process.
“This is exactly why the Trump administration sent me to this court, 1,000 miles from my family,” he added. “I just hope that the urgency you consider adapted to me will be granted to hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”
Khalil will not be immediately expelled. His lawyers said that if he had been sentenced to expel, they would appeal the judge’s decision. COMANS gave Khalil until April 23 to request a suspension of his deportation if his lawyers believe that he qualifies for one. And the judge said that if they did not respect this deadline, she will order his deportee to Syria, where he was born, in Algeria, where he is a citizen.
“If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply to express themselves for the Palestinians and exercise his constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression, this can happen to anyone on any problem that the Trump administration does not like,” said Marc Van der Hout, one of Khalil’s lawyers.
Khalil, who has a green card, is a legal permanent resident. By ordering the expulsion of Khalil, Rubio relied on a rarely used federal law of the 1950s which played a major role in the formation of American immigration during the Cold War. The McCarran-Walter law, or the 1952 immigration national law, gives the Secretary of State the power to decide that the presence of a non-citizen in the United States threatens the country’s foreign policy objectives.
Khalil, 30, was arrested on March 8 in the university building in New York where he lives with his wife, a pregnant American citizen. He was transported to the Jena / Lasalle detention center in Jena, Louisiana, where he has been detained since.
While Friday’s hearing took place before the immigration court, a separate case takes place before a federal court in New Jersey to find out if Khalil should have been arrested and detained.
An aerial view of the central installation of ice transformation in Louisiana in Jena, Louisiana, where Mahmoud Khalil took place.
Gerald Herbert / AP
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Gerald Herbert / AP
