A New York federal court judge ordered Monday that recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil cannot be deported from the United States until a further court order.
“To preserve the Court’s jurisdiction pending a ruling on the petition, Petitioner shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court orders otherwise,” wrote Jesse M. Furman, a district judge in Manhattan, in a court order filed late Monday afternoon. The order also set a conference for attorneys on March 12.
Khalil’s attorney Amy Greer had filed a motion opposing his detention on Sunday and attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights and Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility project at the City University of New York School of Law were expected to file a motion on Monday demanding Khalil’s release.
During the campus protests that roiled Columbia University over Israel’s war on Gaza, Khalil served as a negotiator and mediator between school administrators and student protesters. A permanent U.S. resident expecting his first child, he graduated in December from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Khalil was taken from his New York apartment Saturday evening by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. He is being held without any criminal charges at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, a private jail operated by the GEO Group, according to the ICE detainee tracker. For the first 24 hours of his detention, Khalil’s attorneys and family were in the dark about his whereabouts.
When ICE agents showed up at Khalil’s home on Saturday, they claimed his student visa had been revoked, said Greer, who filed an initial petition challenging his detention over the weekend.
After learning Khalil was a green card holder, agents refused to release him. Greer said the agents even threatened to arrest his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant.
Khalil’s detention has drawn criticism and concern from rights experts, some Democratic lawmakers, and activists across the Palestinian liberation movement. A petition demanding Khalil’s release amassed more than 1.5 million signatures. Activists see the disappearance and potential deportation of an activist who has not been charged with a crime as a violation of the First Amendment and a new escalation in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on speech critical of Israel and its genocide of Palestinians.
“It sets the really dangerous precedent that this administration can punish its political opponents.”
“This is a very dangerous road that we’re going down,” said Ramya Krishnan, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “That this administration is targeting students and faculty in this country based on their First Amendment-protected speech is deeply troubling and should be troubling not only for visa holders in this country, but for everyone, because it sets the really dangerous precedent that this administration can punish its political opponents in this way.”
“It means that none of us are really safe.”
Trump Takes Credit
Trump claimed credit for Khalil’s arrest on Monday afternoon, citing his previous executive orders targeting what he calls “pro-Hamas” protesters, pledging “this is the first arrest of many to come.”
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump wrote in a statement posted to his Truth Social account. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.” Trump added, “We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.”
Trump campaigned on the promise of deporting pro-Palestinian protesters and during his first days in office signed a pair of executive orders that called for crackdowns on the pro-Palestine protest movement. One of the orders that claims to “combat antisemitism” called on the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Education to track students and faculty who are in the U.S. on visas for possible removal.
When confirming Khalil’s arrest, the Department of Homeland Security alleged that he “led activities aligned to Hamas.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said Trump’s administration would be “revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Trump administration officials have not been forthcoming about the legal grounds for Khalil’s detention, noted Krishnan, the Knight First Amendment Institute attorney.
“They’re deliberately obfuscating the authority that they’re relying on here,” Krishnan said. “It’s possible that they had a justification at that time, but it’s also possible they’re searching for one now that would justify the actions that they’ve taken against a green card holder.”
The Department of Homeland Security has not yet confirmed an immigration court date for Khalil.
Krishnan said Khalil has a strong First Amendment claim against his deportation. She cited the case of immigrants rights activist Ravi Ragbir, who had been targeted for deportation during Trump’s first term. He deportation was halted after his attorneys successfully argued in a lawsuit that the Trump administration was targeting him based on his speech critical of the administration’s immigration policies.
“It’s part of a broader pattern by this administration of targeting its political enemies.”
Even so, the chilling effect of Khalil’s arrest is already being felt across the movement, Krishnan said. She has heard from student editors of an undergraduate political science journal who shared that international students have requested to have their articles about Gaza be removed online out of fear of immigration consequences.
“It’s also important not to view this incident in isolation,” she said. “It’s part of a broader pattern by this administration of targeting its political enemies and retaliating against them, not only to silence those specific individuals and organizations, but to chill the speech of citizens more broadly.”
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