Mahmoud Khalil asked an immigration judge to grant him asylum, saying that he feared being targeted by Israel if he was expelled to Syria or Algeria.
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Jena, the. – The immigration judge looked at his courtroom. Mahmoud Khalil was sitting at a table next to his lawyers when they were trying to convince her not to order her expelled towards the Middle East.
“His life is at stake, your honor,” said one of them, Marc Van der Hout, to the judge.
Khalil was concentrated and severe. But he kept distracting. His wife was sitting in the public gallery a few meters away, sheeping their newborn grandson, Deen. The baby was cooing. Everyone could hear. And each time, Khalil could not resist a smile.
It was a touch of lightness in a hearing room differently heavy with the gravity of what was discussed: the fear of Khalil only if it is expelled, the state of Israel could try to kill it.
Last month, judge Jamee Comans judged that Khalil could be expelled Because as a judge of immigration, she did not have the power to question the determination of the Secretary of State Marco Rubio according to which her pro-Palestinian activism at the University of Columbia was anti-Semitic and threatened American foreign policy objectives. Unless his lawyers thought he was qualified for special protection such as asylum, said the judge, she would order the expulsion in Syria, where he was born and grew up in a camp for the Palestinian refugees, or in Algeria, which gave him a passport because of his mother’s ancestry.
On Thursday, more than 10 hours exhausting behind the barbed wire of the Central Louisiana Ice Processing Center, where Khalil is detained, his lawyers called on videoconference experts to convince the judge to grant him asylum and to release him. Here is the heart of their argument: Trump’s false administration, they say, and the public accusations that Khalil is an anti-Semitic and terrorist sympathizer transformed him into a high-level critic of Israel known in the world. Because of this, he said that he feared that if he was expelled in the Middle East, Israel could come after him.
“It could range from assassination, kidnapping, torture,” said Khalil for more than three hours of testimony that recalled key moments in his life, from his first memory in a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, Syria, at the birth of his son last month because he was locked at the 1,400 -thousand detention center in New York.
Mahmoud Khalil appeared before an immigration court at the Louisiana central ice treatment center, where he was detained since immigration agents arrested him in New York on March 8.
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President Trump, Secretary of State Rubio and other representatives of the government, “a terrorist, a terrorist sympathizer or a supporter of Hamas, who could not be more distant from the truth.
He challenged government lawyers seated a few meters from him to offer evidence on the contrary. “I have become, not by choice, a celebrity – someone who has a target on the back by these ervances. It means that wherever I go to the world, I will have this target.”
The Coman Judge said it would be several weeks before making a decision at Khalil’s asylum request. But everything she decides will not be the last word of her fate. A federal judge of the Northeast temporarily prevented the government from deporting him while he examines if this violated the constitutional right of Khalil to freedom of expression. Khalil lawyers continue all the legal options to stop his expulsion and restore his green card, and said they will go to the Supreme Court if necessary.
During the asylum hearing on Thursday, his lawyers interviewed several experts in the Middle East about the reasons for which they thought that Khalil would be in danger if he was returned to it.
“The United States has called him a pro-Hamas agent,” said Muriam Haleh Davis, professor of the Middle East at UC Santa Cruz. She declared that Israel has historically targeted Hamas employees for assassination.
Khaled Elgindy, an Israeli-Palestinian business expert from Georgetown University, told court that the newly high profile of Khalil as a critic of the Israeli bombing of Gaza puts him in danger of damage or arrest.
Khalil has obtained an ability to influence the Americans, said Elgindy, so “it is a direct and powerful threat to Israel’s objectives. If it can be targeted by the American government, then the Israelis would certainly perceive it.”
Lisa Wedeen, an expert in Syria at the University of Chicago, testified on the ease with which, if she wanted, Israel could target Khalil there, given the political instability of Syria and the recent expansion by Israel of the territory that she controls in the country.
“My greatest concern is that they will disappear,” said Wedeen, because of “latitude and impunity with which Israel is capable of operating in Syria”.
During his testimony, Khalil said that in addition to fear Israel, he also fears that if he returned to Syria, he could be targeted by former agents of Bashar al-Assad who have stayed in the country since the fall of the government of Assad last December. Khalil, who is now 30 years old, said that he had organized demonstrations against Assad in adolescence in Syria and fled the country in 2013 after two cousins ​​with which he protests often protested.
The Ministry of Internal Security did not call its own witnesses to contest the claim for fear of Khalil. It is not clear if he has submitted a written testimony.
But when he contrainded Khalil, Numa Metoyer, a lawyer for the department, asked questions to probe the level of danger that Khalil would be really confronted.
If he feared the expulsion to Syria, Metyer had asked him, why had he visited the country in January?
“Before March 8, it was different according to March 8,” said Khalil, referring to the date of the arrest of ice agents, Call him A “radical foreign pro-Hammas”.
“Because the attention was paid to you here in this case, now you have been targeted by the Israeli government?” Asked Metoyer.
The Ministry of Internal Security did not immediately answer questions on Khalil asylum application. After the hearing, his lawyers said they hoped that the judge would consider him “with an open mind”.
During his testimony, Khalil did it too.
“Although I have no confidence in the immigration system,” he said, “I hope my presence here is not just a formality.”
