The first hearing for Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil is taking place Wednesday in New York as the Trump administration and Khalil’s lawyers fight for the case to be heard in their preferred jurisdictions.
The White House attempted to deport Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who grew up in Syria, for allegedly being a pro-Hamas activist during the anti-Israel protests at Columbia. Immigration authorities arrested him on Saturday.
Although Khalil was transported to a federal immigration detention facility in Lousiana, his legal team wants the case to be heard in New York, leading to conflict with the Trump administration, which wants the case to happen in Lousiana courts, per Politico. On Wednesday morning, the first court arguments will play out in the District Court for the Southern District of New York. The Trump administration’s legal team is set to argue Khalil should remain in Louisiana, contending that the Empire State is “an improper venue” and has no jurisdiction over the case.
This case is taking place because a federal judge blocked the Trump administration on Monday from immediately deporting Khalil and ordered a hearing on the case in New York.
Khalil’s arrest has earned criticism from Democrats, who say he was unlawfully arrested without cause. On Tuesday, 14 Democratic representatives signed onto a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding that Khalil, whom they called “a political prisoner,” be released immediately.
The White House argued it has the authority to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him because of his connection to a recent protest at Columbia University in which pro-Palestinian activists distributed flyers written by Hamas state media.
“Mahmoud Khalil was an individual who was given the privilege of coming to this country to study at one of our nation’s finest universities and colleges, and he took advantage of that opportunity by siding with terrorists, Hamas terrorists,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda flyers,” she added. “This administration is not going to tolerate individuals having the privilege of studying in our country and then siding with pro-terrorist organizations that have killed Americans.”
Khalil’s lawyer argued that Khalil’s arrest violates his First and Fifth Amendment rights.
Khalil was suspended and then reinstated as a Columbia student after he was involved in a violent pro-Palestinian protest at the school’s Hamilton Hall last April, according to an interview he did with CNN. He was investigated by a Columbia University disciplinary body last year for his activism, according to an Associated Press review. Conservatives have also charged Khalil with being in a group of masked activists who interrupted a university class on Israeli history in January. Two of those activists were expelled over the incident, during which they distributed flyers that depicted a boot stomping on the Star of David and said, “Burn Zionism to the ground.”
The Trump administration’s focus on Khalil stems from his reported participation in a sit-in protest at Barnard College’s Milstein Center on March 5 that was supported by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian student organization for which Khalil served as a spokesman last year.
The Milstein Center demonstration provoked outrage from the school’s Jewish community, which posted videos and photos to social media of pamphlets from the Hamas media office. Paraphernalia distributed during the Barnard College sit-in featured “photos of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who vowed to destroy the Jews and Israel, and of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who orchestrated the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” according to the social media account Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students.
Elisha Baker, who is identified on social media as a Columbia University student and co-chairman of Columbia’s pro-Israel student association, said the pamphlets sought to “justify” Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel in an X post that was highlighted by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The protesters also wrote “Death to America” in the Milstein Center’s library guest book, per the Times of Israel.
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Khalil has not been charged with a crime, which has led to criticism from Democrats, who argue he is being denied proper due process.
GOP affiliates argue the government has the authority to remove Khalil under provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act that render deportable “an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”