After a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from imprisoning and deporting Mahmoud Khalil on one set of legal grounds, lawyers for the government now argue the prominent Columbia University student activist is being detained for an entirely different reason.
On Friday morning, Khalil’s legal team was preparing for his release from an immigration detention center in rural Louisiana, where he has been jailed for more than three months over the government’s allegations that his Palestinian activism is a threat to foreign policy.
But lawyers for the government now argue Khalil is being detained over allegations that he lied on immigration documents.
District Judge Michael Farbiarz agreed to keep him in detention on those grounds, despite finding Khalil’s ongoing detention unconstitutional just days earlier.
“Mahmoud Khalil was detained in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian rights,” Amy Greer, associate attorney at Dratel + Lewis and part of his legal team, said in a statement to The Independent.
“The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father’s Day as a family,” Greer said.
“Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in ICE detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians,” she added. “It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”
Khalil was accused of “antisemitic activities” for his role as a Palestinian student activist against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Officials concede that he has not committed any crime, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sought to justify Khalil’s arrest by invoking a rarely used law claiming that Khalil’s presence in the United States undermines foreign policy interests of preventing antisemitism.
But on June 11, Judge Farbiarz ruled that the administration had unconstitutionally wielded the law against Khalil, whose “career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled,” the judge wrote.
The government has “little or no interest in applying the relevant underlying statutes in what is likely an unconstitutional way,” Farbiarz added.
The judge said the government could not detain and deport him on those spurious legal grounds.
He also said in his ruling that immigrants are rarely if ever imprisoned over alleged omissions in immigration documents. He even said an argument to keep Khalil over those allegations “does not work.”
The judge said it is Rubio’s “antisemitism” memo — not the immigration paperwork charges — that “drives” Khalil’s detention.
But lawyers for the government on Friday claimed he was being detained over those paperwork allegations, which were not raised until more than a week after he was even arrested.
The government has accused Khalil of omitting details about his work history from his green card application. Khalil disputes that he was employed by or served as an “officer” of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, as the administration claims. He had completed an internship approved by the university as part of his graduate studies.
Khalil’s lawyers argue the Trump administration is only using those allegations as pretext to keep him detained if efforts to deport him for his activism were found to be unconstitutional.
He will remain inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, for now.
Khalil was stripped of his green card and arrested in front of his then-pregnant wife in their New York City apartment building on March 8. He was then sent to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, roughly 1,300 miles away from their home in New York.
His wife Noor Abdalla gave birth to their son in April. They met for the first and only time before his immigration court hearing last month.
Khalil and his legal team argue his arrest and detention — and attempted removal from the country, which is currently blocked by court order — are retaliatory violations of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech and his Fifth Amendment right to due process of law, among other claims.
His arrest sparked international outrage over the Trump administration’s attempts to crush dissent against Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza. Rubio has said he “proudly” revoked hundreds of student visas over campus activism, leading to several high-profile arrests of international scholars.
