Graduated student from the University of Columbia Mahmoud Khalil Perhaps expelled from the United States as a risk of national security, an immigration judge in Louisiana found on Friday during a hearing on the legality to deport the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The government’s assertion that Khalil’s presence in the United States has posed “potentially serious consequences in foreign policy” was sufficient to meet the requirements for his expulsion, said immigration judge Jamee E. Comans at the end of a hearing in Jena.
COMANS said the government had “established clear and convincing evidence that it was removable”.
Khalil lawyers said they planned to continue fighting. The judge gave them until April 23 to request a derogation.
After the hearing of the immigration court, Khalil’s lawyer Marc Van der Hout told a federal judge in New Jersey that Khalil appealed to the Board of Immigration APALS after the immigration judge rendered the final written decision. He said lawyers can also continue an asylum case on behalf of Khalil.
“So nothing will happen quickly in the immigration procedure, even if it found it removable for the grounds of foreign policy,” he said.
Addressing the judge at the end of the immigration hearing, Khalil said that she declared during a hearing earlier in the week than “there was nothing more important for this court than the rights of the regular procedure and the fundamental equity”.
“Obviously, what we have seen today, none of these principles was present today or in this whole process,” he added.
Van der Hout, also criticized the equity of the audience.
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“Today, we saw our worst fears playing: Mahmoud was subject to a regular procedural charame, a blatant violation of his right to an equitable hearing and an armament of the Immigration Act to abolish dissent,” Van der Hout said in a statement.
Lawyers contest Khalil’s detention and potential deportation
Khalil, a legal American resident, was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8 In the hall of his apartment belonging to the university, the first arrest under the promised repression of President Donald Trump against the students who joined the campus demonstrations against the war in Gaza.
In one day, he was transported by plane across the country and taken to an immigration detention center in Jena, thousands of kilometers from his lawyers and his wife, an American citizen who has to give birth soon.
Khalil lawyers have challenged the legality of his detention, saying that the Trump administration is trying to repress freedom of expression protected by the American Constitution.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited A law rarely used to justify the expulsion of KhalilThis gives it the power to expel those who pose “the unfavorable consequences of potentially serious foreign policy for the United States”.
At the hearing on Friday, Van der Hout told the judge that the government’s observations at the Court proved the attempt to deport his client “had nothing to do with foreign policy” and said that the government was trying to deport him for an activity protected by the first amendment.
They declared that an immigration judge could determine if Khalil was subject to expulsion, then carry out a release hearing under bail later if it is noted that it is not.
The demonstrations that led to the arrest of Khalil
Khalil is not accused of having violated the laws during the demonstrations of Columbia. The government, however, said that the non-citizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country to express points of view that the administration considers as anti-Semitic and “pro-Hamas” pro-Hamas, referring to the Palestinian militant group who attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Khalil, a 30-year-old graduate student, was a negotiator and spokesperson for militant students from Columbia University who took over a campus lawn last spring to protest the Israel military campaign in Gaza.
The university brought the police to dismantle the camp After a small group of demonstrators, seized an administrative building. Khalil is not accused of having participated in the occupation of the building and was not among those arrested as part of the demonstrations.
But the images of his face without mask during the demonstrations, as well as his desire to share his name with the journalists, made him an object of contempt among those who saw the demonstrators and their requests as anti -Semites. The White House accused Khalil of “Ranking on the side of the terrorists”, but has not yet cited support for the complaint.
The federal judges of New York and New Jersey ordered the government not to expel Khalil while his business takes place in court.
The Trump administration said it was taking at least $ 400 million in federal funding for research programs in Columbia and its medical center to punish it for not having done enough to combat what it considers anti -Semitism on the campus.
Some Jewish students and teachers complained to be harassed during demonstrations or ostracized because of their faith or support for Israel.
Immigration authorities have suppressed other criticism from Israel on university campuses, arresting a scholarship holder from the University of Georgetown who had spoken on the social media of the War of Israel-Gaza, canceling the student visas of certain demonstrators and moving a brown university professor who, according to them, had attended the funeral of Lebanon with a leader of Hezbollah Played with Lebanon with Israel.
Khalil has Educatedly rejected the allegations of anti -SemitismAccusing the Trump administration in a letter sent from prison last month of “targeting me as part of a wider strategy to remove dissent”.
“Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual situation,” he added, “I hope to be free to see the birth of my firstborn.”
Brumback reported to Atlanta. The journalist of Associated Press Larry Neumeister in New York contributed.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press