A federal judge has denied the Trump administration’s move to dismiss a case from Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student activist who was detained by immigration enforcement agents and jailed in Louisiana over his support for pro-Palestine demonstrations on campus.
Khalil is currently detained in a Louisiana facility, more than 1,300 miles from New York, and has been placed in deportation proceedings.
New York District Judge Jesse Furman is moving the case to New Jersey, where Khalil was detained at the time his lawyers filed for his release.
Khalil has remained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention for more than a week as his lawyers challenge the “targeted, retaliatory detention and attempted removal of a student protester because of his constitutionally protected speech.”
The arrest of Khalil, a lawful permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant with their child, has sparked international outrage and fears that the administration is moving to crush political dissidents, starting with campus demonstrations against Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza and U.S. support.
Judge Furman said a transfer of Khalil’s case, “rather than dismissal, is the path that courts usually take in these circumstances.”
“That path is all the more appropriate in this case,” as a dismissal of Khalil’s lawsuit challenging his arrest would toss Judge Furman’s earlier court order preventing the government from deporting him while his legal challenge plays out, the judge wrote.
“In many ways, this is indeed an exceptional case, and there is a need for careful judicial review,” Furman wrote.
“Such judicial review is especially critical when, as here, there are colorable claims that the executive branch has violated the law or exercised its otherwise lawful authority in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner,” he added. “And in an exceptional case, it is all the more important for a court to apply well-established principles to the facts, lest emotions or passions interfere with reasoned analysis; that is the essence of the rule of law.”
Khalil, who is Palestinian, grew up in a refugee camp in Syria. He entered the United States on a student visa in 2022 to pursue a master’s degree in public administration, which he completed last year. His anticipated graduation date is May 2025.
He became a lawful permanent resident in 2024.
Khalil “has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide and criticized Columbia University for, in his view, financing and in other ways facilitating such violence,” his attorneys wrote in court filings last week.
On March 8, plainclothes federal agents followed Khalil and his wife into the lobby of an apartment building, and two other officers approached from inside the building, the filing states. They never produced a warrant, according to his attorneys.
He was moved to a detention facility in New Jersey and then flown to Louisiana the next day.
“I am a political prisoner,” Khalil said in a public statement published March 19.
The Trump administration “is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent” in which “visa-holders, green-card carriers and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs,” he said.
This is a developing story
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