Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil will remain in the detention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana for the time being, a judge ruled.
At a procedural hearing in New York Wednesday, New York District Judge Jesse Furman ordered that Khalil remain in Louisiana temporarily to allow time to address significant legal problems, including determining the appropriate jurisdiction for his case. He also ruled that Khalil be allowed at least one phone call with his counsel on Wednesday and one Thursday. On Monday, the judge blocked efforts to deport Khalil until his attorneys and the federal government could appear in court.
Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student and activist, is currently detained at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena. After his arrest in New York City, he was briefly held in New Jersey before being transferred to the Louisiana facility. The 30-year-old was absent from Wednesday’s hearing.
Khalil’s attorneys ask that he be returned to New York and released under supervision. Justice Department attorney Brandon Waterman contended that the case should be relocated to New Jersey or Louisiana, where Khalil has been held, according to a motion filed Tuesday.
If the case is moved to Louisiana, where he is being housed, the direct appeals court would be the 5th Circuit, which contains the most Republican-appointed judges of any appeals court and is seen as the most conservative in the nation.
His attorneys argue that they haven’t seen their client since his Saturday arrest.
“He was taken by U.S. government agents in retaliation, essentially, for exercising his First Amendment rights, for speaking up in defense of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, for being critical of the U.S. government and of the Israeli government,” his attorney, Ramzi Kassem, said outside court following the hearing.
Kassem spoke to hundreds of supporters outside the courthouse, many holding signs and waving Palestinian flags. “As we tried to make clear in court today, what happened to Mahmoud Khalil is nothing short of extraordinary and shocking and outrageous,” he said. “It should outrage anybody who believes that speech should be free in the United States of America.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking to reporters from Shannon, Ireland, argued that Khalil’s arrest was not about free speech.
“This is not about free speech,” he said. “This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card.”
On Wednesday, border czar Tom Homan said that Khalil represented a national security threat and that free speech has limitations.
“But when you go to college campuses … protesting and locking down and taking over buildings and damaging property and handing out leaflets for Hamas, who is a terrorist organization … coming to this country either on a visa or becoming a resident alien is a great privilege, but there are rules associated with that,” Homan said.
On Saturday, Khalil, who is a permanent resident on a green card from Syria, was arrested by immigration authorities. The Trump administration announced it would deport him over his involvement in the school’s protests, a move that Furman blocked on Monday until the Wednesday hearing.
According to a senior homeland security official speaking with CNN, Khalil’s detention and possible deportation were based on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which holds that “an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
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Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the arrest was made per President Donald Trump’s recent executive order prohibiting antisemitism.
Others, such as New York Attorney General Letitia James, said they were “concerned” about the arrest. “My office is monitoring the situation, and we are in contact with his attorney,” she added.
Kaelen Deese contributed to this report.
