Federal judges skeptical of Trump effort to deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil
Federal appeals court judges in Philadelphia on Tuesday expressed skepticism at the Trump administration’s efforts to detain Palestinian Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil once more and deport him, along with its arguments to have the case heard down south.
The government has challenged rulings issued by a New Jersey judge, Michael Farbiarz, this summer, which ordered Khalil released from ICE custody and found his detention was unjustified and likely unconstitutional.
Arguing before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, an attorney for Trump’s Justice Department, Drew Ensign, said the lower court rulings keeping the pro-Palestine activist out of a Louisiana detention facility and in the U.S. were “indefensible” because they were wrongly decided in New Jersey and not Louisiana, where he was moved after his arrest by Homeland Security agents at his Columbia-owned apartment on a Sunday morning in March, before ICE’s online tracker had updated his location.
That position got side-eyed by Trump-appointed Judge Stephanos Bibas, who questioned whether the Trump administration expected the courts to create “a black hole of no jurisdiction” when ICE’s website is down.
“He didn’t know, the lawyers didn’t know, they had to prepare for the worst,” Bibas said. “They did their best. What else do they do, unless we’re creating a black hole of no jurisdiction?”
A lawyer for Khalil, Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel in the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, said the government had illegally gone after Khalil for protected speech and sought to rig his legal remedies in its favor, making for a “Kafkaesque” experience that sent lawyers on a wild chase around different jurisdictions.
Lawyers for the pro-Palestine activist brought the underlying habeas corpus case in Manhattan in the hours after his arrest, with no way to know he’d quickly been moved from 26 Federal Plaza to a facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The case was soon transferred to New Jersey.
Ensign argued Tuesday that it should have been refiled where he ultimately ended up, in the Western District of Louisiana.
In addition to arguing that relevant congressional law authorized the transfer of his case from New York to New Jersey, Khalil’s lawyers asked the Third Circuit on Tuesday to affirm Farbiarz’s rulings forbidding the government from ordering him deported on foreign policy grounds.
Farbiarz’s June rulings deemed unlawful the Trump administration’s main reason for detaining the student activist, which was based on an obscure provision in immigration law enabling Secretary of State Marco Rubio to determine his pro-Palestinian advocacy could compromise a “compelling” U.S. foreign policy interest, meaning U.S. support for Israel. Khalil hasn’t been accused of breaking any laws.
“Why shouldn’t the government have the power to remove people from the country who are harmful to the country?” Judge Thomas Hardiman, a Bush appointee, posed to Kaufman at one point, hypothetically.
“It has many means to do that, but it can’t be based on lawful, protected speech, particularly core political speech,” Kaufman said.
The student activist’s lawyers are also challenging a charge the government tacked on after his detention in support of his deportation, claiming he’d made misrepresentations about his work experience with the United Nations on his green card form.
The habeas case is unfolding alongside Khalil’s immigration court case, in which a judge employed by the Trump administration has ordered him deported, which tristate judges have barred while his habeas case plays out.
Khalil, who is also suing the government, has filed a notice of appeal in the South regarding the rulings by immigration judge Jamee Comans, who signed off on his deportation in September. His Louisiana lawyer, Marc Van Der Hout, on Tuesday said Comans had “completely ignored” the federal court’s order not to rely on the government’s foreign policy grounds.
In a statement Tuesday, Khalil said the administration’s intentions “couldn’t be more clear: They want to make an example of me to intimidate those speaking out for Palestine across the country.”
Khalil played a prominent role in campus protests at Columbia against Israel’s war on Gaza and the university’s investment ties to the Israeli government. He has vehemently denied allegations by Trump and his top cabinet members that his support for Palestinians is in any way antisemitic or supportive of terrorism.
The 30-year-old, who was born in a refugee camp for Palestinians in Syria and holding Algerian citizenship, missed the birth of his first child and his graduation from Columbia’s international affairs program while locked up for 104 days in Louisiana.
“The detention here, of course, was for First Amendment speech, Mahmoud’s speech in support of Palestinian lives and rights. But the risk runs beyond that,” Ramzi Kassem said at a press conference Tuesday.
“It’s a blueprint, it’s a template that can be mobilized against any issue set that this administration disagrees with, whether it’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, this model could be applied to those issues next that this administration happens to disagree with.”
The Daily News reached out to a Justice Department spokesman for comment.
