Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is set to have his second hearing in immigration court in Jena, Louisiana, on Friday, where the judge will determine whether he can be deported from the US for beliefs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said could have “potential serious adverse foreign policy consequences”.
Khalil, who played a prominent role in the Columbia University student protests over the past year, was picked up in early March by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from his apartment in New York City.
Khalil has been held at an ICE prison facility in Jena for the past month, where his lawyers believe the Trump administration finds judges more favourable to the US government.
However, the government has a high bar to meet. The evidence submitted must be “clear, convincing and unequivocal”, one of Khalil’s lawyers, Marc L Van Der Hout, said at a briefing for reporters on Thursday.
That evidence was submitted on Wednesday in the form of a letter, published by the Associated Press, where Rubio insisted that Khalil’s “presence or activities would compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest”.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on
Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
“That’s it. Two pages,” Van Der Hout said. “There is zero else.”
“[Rubio’s] determination… has absolutely nothing to do with foreign policy. This division of law is something that has been rarely used. If we use it, it’s supposed to be introduced for the purpose of saying, ‘The Shah of Iran shouldn’t stay in the United States,’ public figures like that.”
Rubio’s letter also stipulated that Khalil’s presence in the US undermines its policy of combatting antisemitism.
“But what is the antisemitism? It is criticising Israel and the United States for the slaughtering that is going on in Gaza and Palestine. That’s what this case is about,” Van Der Hout said.
“The Rubio memo is completely devoid of any factual recitation,” Johnny Sinodis, another one of Khalil’s lawyers, told reporters.
“Tomorrow should be a full-blown evidentiary hearing,” he added. “The immigration judge… will make a finding as to whether Mahmoud is removable, but we are far from the end of the road if that happens.”
Uncertainty
If judge Jamee Comans in Louisiana finds on Friday that the government has not met its burden of providing “clear, convincing and unequivocal” evidence against Khalil, his lawyers said the judge must then “terminate the proceedings” so Khalil can be released.
The Trump administration would very likely then appeal the decision.
While Khalil’s legal team sounded confident in insisting the government’s case was weak, Van Der Hout said the speed at which Comans moved to schedule Friday’s hearing was “abhorrent”.
“We were shocked that on Tuesday, the first hearing in this case, the immigration judge said, ‘I’m proceeding to trial in essentially 72 hours’,” he told reporters.
“It is contrary to every notion of due process. We have a right to see the evidence, confront the evidence, respond to the evidence, and to have this rush to judgment has no place in our in our court system at all.”
“We are hoping she will have a different attitude than she had on Tuesday,” he added.
‘He’s feeling strong’
Khalil is one of several people affiliated with prestigious universities who have been detained by ICE agents as part of the government’s immigration crackdown.
He was a negotiator for pro-Palestinian student protesters in talks with Columbia University’s administration during last spring’s Gaza solidarity encampment on campus opposing Israel’s war on Gaza.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents arrested him outside of his apartment on Columbia University’s campus on 8 March as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian students, as the administration equates their activism with antisemitism.
The plain clothes agents stated they had revoked Khalil’s student visa. When his wife showed the agents that Mahmoud has a green card, not a visa, they said that it was revoked as well. Khalil was transferred to an immigration detention centre in central Louisiana without notice from his counsel or his wife, despite the fact that his habeas case was pending in New York as he was held next door in New Jersey.
Habeas petitions challenge arrest and detention as violations of the First and Fifth Amendments.
Despite what Khalil has endured, “he’s feeling confident, he’s feeling strong, and he’s feeling supported by the community,” Sinodis said.
“The support that he’s received, not only nationally but internationally, from people who are appalled by what the US government is trying to do, in this case, is giving him the ability to move forward.”