JENA, Louisiana (Reuters) -A U.S. immigration judge in Louisiana ruled on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration can proceed with its deportation case against Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested in New York City last month.
The ruling was made by Judge Jamee Comans of the LaSalle Immigration Court, located inside a jail complex for immigrants surrounded by double-fenced razor wire run by private government contractors in rural Louisiana.
Khalil, a prominent figure in the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that has roiled Columbia’s New York City campus, was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, holds Algerian citizenship and became a U.S. lawful permanent resident last year. Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, is a U.S. citizen.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined last month that Khalil should be removed because his presence in the United States has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” citing a 1952 law called the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Khalil and his lawyers have said the Trump administration was targeting him for speech that is protected under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment including the right to criticize American foreign policy.
His case is a high-profile test of efforts by the Republican president to deport foreign pro-Palestinian students who are in the United States legally and, like Khalil, have not been charged with any crime. The administration has said Khalil and other international students who take part in such protests are harming U.S. foreign policy interests.
Khalil, 30, has called himself a political prisoner. He was arrested on March 8 at his Columbia University apartment building and transferred to a Louisiana jail.
His lawyers have said they are being rushed to review the evidence that the administration submitted on Wednesday on the orders of the judge.
In a two-page letter submitted to the court and Khalil’s lawyers, which they shared with reporters, Rubio wrote that Khalil should be removed for his role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”
Rubio’s letter did not accuse Khalil of breaking any laws, but he said that the State Department can revoke the legal status of immigrants even when their beliefs, associations or statements are “otherwise lawful.”
Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of Khalil’s attorneys, told a press briefing on Thursday that Rubio’s letter “is a sort of tacky, Soviet-style diktat that’s equal parts empty and chilling.”
Khalil has said criticism of the U.S. government’s support of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism.
A State Department spokesperson said the department does not comment on ongoing legal cases.
In a separate case in a New Jersey federal court, Khalil is challenging what he has said is his unlawful arrest, detention and transfer to the jail Louisiana, some 1,200 miles (1,930 km) from his family and lawyers in New York City.
The American immigration court system is run and its judges are appointed by the U.S. Justice Department, separate from the government’s judicial branch.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Jena, Louisana; Additional reporting by Luc Cohen; editing by Donna Bryson, Lincoln Feast and Will Dunham)
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