Judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported

JENA, La. — A Louisiana immigration judge ruled Friday that activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported.

Khalil, who as a Columbia University graduate student led pro-Palestinian protests there last year, was detained last month after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had determined that Khalil’s activism was antisemitic and that allowing him to remain in the country would undermine a U.S. foreign policy goal of combatting antisemitism around the world.

During a hearing at the remote Louisiana detention center where Khalil is being held, Judge Jamee Comans said she had no authority to question Rubio’s determination.

After the ruling, Khalil told the judge, “I would like to quote what you said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness. Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process.

“This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family,” he added. “I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me are afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”

After the hearing, Khalil turned around to face the 22 observers and journalists filing out of the courtroom and formed the shape of a heart with his hands. He smiled.

Khalil will not immediately be deported. His attorneys have said that if he were ordered deported, they would appeal the judge’s ruling. Comans gave Khalil until April 23 to request a stay of his deportation if his attorneys believe he qualifies for one. And the judge said if they don’t meet that deadline, she will order him deported either to Syria, where he was born, or to Algeria, where he is a citizen.

“If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone over any issue the Trump administration dislikes,” said Marc Van Der Hout, one of Khalil’s attorneys.

Khalil, who has a green card, is a lawful permanent resident. In ordering Khalil’s deportation, Rubio relied on a rarely used federal statute from the 1950s that played a major role in shaping American immigration during the Cold War. The McCarran-Walter Act, or the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952, gives the secretary of state authority to decide that a noncitizen’s presence in the United States threatens the country’s foreign policy goals.

Khalil, 30, was arrested March 8 at the university-owned apartment building in New York City where he lives with his wife, a U.S. citizen who is pregnant. He was transported to the Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, La., where he has been held since.

While Friday’s hearing took place in immigration court, a separate case is playing out in federal court in New Jersey over whether Khalil should have been arrested and detained.