Protests continue over the immigration arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and green card holder who the Trump administration is trying to deport over his role in campus pro-Palestine protests.
The White House has said that Khalil, who is not formally accused of breaking any laws, is deportable because a rarely used portion of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act lets the Secretary of State deport people deemed to risk “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
Khalil’s lawyers and supporters, meanwhile, argue he is being unlawfully targeted for exercising his First Amendment rights.
Thirty years ago, another figure voiced concerns over the same provision at issue today: Donald Trump’s sister, federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry.
In 1996, she wrote the opinion in a case in New Jersey federal court regarding a Mexican diplomat the U.S. was trying to deport as he faced an investigation in his home country.
The law, Barry noted, had never been interpreted in a past opinion, but should be considered unconstitutional, as it represented a “breathtaking departure” from the principles that deportations and extraditions are based on clearly defined offenses and involve a process allowing migrants to hear and challenge the basis of their removal.
“‘Foreign policy’ cannot serve as the talisman behind which Congress may abdicate its responsibility to pass only sufficiently clear and definite laws,” the judge added.
The law, however, remains in place.
Barry’s opinion was overturned on procedural grounds, and U.S. officials eventually opted to indict the Mexican official instead, though he died before ever facing a trial.
That puts the administration’s present arguments in mostly untested legal territory.
Trump administration officials have said that Khalil’s participation in the protests harmed the U.S. foreign policy interest in stopping antisemitism and cracking down on officially designated terror groups like Hamas.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, told The Independent on Sunday that Khalil was arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.”
Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” they added.
The White House has accused a protest group Khalil helped lead with distributing pro-Hamas materials, though haven’t shown evidence that the former student himself ever created or distributed such materials.
“When you hand out leaflets inciting violence on a college campus, that’s illegal,” White House border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday. “Being in this country with a visa or a resident card is a privilege, and you got to follow certain rules.”
In a complaint filed Thursday in New York federal court, Khalil’s attorneys argue this rationale doesn’t past muster, and that the arrest is a violation of First Amendment and due process rights.
The arrest, in which immigration officers reportedly did not show Khalil or his attorneys a warrant or know he was a green card holder, was “plainly intended as retaliation and punishment for Mr. Khalil’s protected speech and intended to silence, or at the very least restrict and chill, his speech now and in the future,” the complaint argues.
The suit cites various Trump administration actions and statements, including a January executive order explicitly describing a goal to deport all non-citizens who joined in pro-Palestinian protests, and a top Department of Homeland Security official who told NPR Khalil was arrested for engaging in “pro-Palestinian activity,” while declining to answer if any form of protest against the U.S. or Israel could count as a deportable offense.
The student activist, who is in immigration detention in Louisiana, is petitioning to be returned to New York, where he was arrested at the university-owned apartment he shares with his eight-month-pregnant wife, a U.S. citizen.
Experts say the case is only just getting started.
Returning to New York “may well be just the beginning of a long haul for the Palestinian student,” University of California, Davis, law professor Gabriel J. Chin wrote in a recent article.
“Courts have proved reluctant to second-guess security grounds rationales in immigration cases. For these reasons, cases like Khalil’s may go on for years,” the professor said.
Barry died in 2023.
