NEW YORK: Mahmoud Khalil will remain detained in Louisiana until at least next week following an initial court hearing in New York on Wednesday over the Trump administration’s plans to deport the Columbia University graduate student for his role in campus protests against Israel.
The brief hearing, which focused on thorny jurisdictional issues, drew hundreds of demonstrators to the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan to denounce the Saturday arrest of Khalil, a permanent US resident who is married to an American citizen. Khalil, 30, didn’t attend — after initially being held in New Jersey, he was moved to an immigration detention center in Louisiana.
After Khalil’s Manhattan arrest, Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered that the 30-year-old not be deported while the court considers a legal challenge brought by his lawyers, who want Khalil returned to New York and released under supervision.
During Wednesday’s hearing, attorney Brandon Waterman argued on behalf of the Justice Department that the venue for the deportation fight should be moved from New York City to Louisiana or New Jersey because those are the locations where Khalil has been held.
One of Khalil’s lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, told the judge that Khalil was “identified, targeted and detained” because of his advocacy for Palestinian rights and his protected speech. He said Khalil has no criminal convictions, but “for some reason, is being detained.”
Kassem also told Furman that Khalil’s legal team hasn’t been able to have a single attorney-client-protected phone call with him.
Furman ordered that the lawyers be allowed to speak with him by phone at least once on Wednesday and Thursday. Calling the legal issues “important and weighty,” the judge also directed the two sides to submit a joint letter on Friday describing when they propose to submit written arguments over the legal issues raised by Khalil’s detention.
Kassem said Khalil’s lawyers would update their lawsuit on Thursday.
Khalil’s arrest has sparked protests in New York and other US cities. Actor Susan Sarandon emerged from the courthouse and told reporters that “no matter where you stand on genocide, freedom of speech ... is a right that we all have.” She added: ”And this is a turning point in the history and the freedom of this country.”
Some of Khalil’s supporters, many of them wearing a keffiyeh and mask, attended the hearing. Hundreds more demonstrated outside the courthouse, beating drums, waving Palestinian flags and chanting for Khalil’s release. The raucous crowd grew quiet, though, to hear Kassem speak.
“As we tried to make clear in court today, what happened to Mahmoud Khalil is nothing short of extraordinary and shocking and outrageous,” Kassem told the crowd. “It should outrage anybody who believes that speech should be free in the United States of America.”
Kassem said the legal grounds cited by the government to detain Khalil were “vague” and “rarely used,” masking the true intent: “retaliation and punishment for the exercise of free speech.”
Columbia became the center of a US pro-Palestinian protest movement that swept across college campuses nationwide last year and led to more than 2,000 arrests.
Khalil, whose wife is pregnant with their first child, finished his requirements for a Columbia master’s degree in December. Born in Syria, he is a grandson of Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland, his lawyers said in a legal filing.
President Donald Trump heralded Khalil’s arrest as the first “of many to come,” vowing on social media to deport students he described as engaging in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
During a stopover in Ireland while headed from Saudi Arabia to a meeting of the G7 foreign ministers in Canada, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Khalil’s case is “not about free speech.”
“This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card,” Rubio said.
Khalil, who acted as a spokesperson for Columbia protesters, hasn’t been charged with a crime. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the administration moved to deport him under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state the power to deport a noncitizen on foreign policy grounds.
Civil rights groups and Khalil’s attorneys say the government is unconstitutionally using its immigration control powers to stop him from speaking out.
US Jewish groups and leaders and organizations have been divided in their response to Khalili’s detention.
Among those welcoming the move was the Anti-Defamation League, which said it hopes it serves as a “deterrent.”
“We appreciate the Trump Administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism — and this action further illustrates that resolve by holding alleged perpetrators responsible for their actions,” the ADL said on social media.
Amy Spitalnick, CEO of Jewish Council for Public Affairs, decried Khalil’s detention.
The Trump administration “is exploiting real concerns about antisemitism to undercut democracy: from gutting education funding to deporting students to attacking diversity, equity, & inclusion,” she wrote on Bluesky. “As we’ve repeatedly said: this makes Jews — & so many others — less safe.”
Columbia grad student’s detention will stretch on as lawyers spar over Trump’s plan to deport him
https://arab.news/8bwwz
Columbia grad student’s detention will stretch on as lawyers spar over Trump’s plan to deport him
- After Khalil’s Manhattan arrest, Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered that the 30-year-old not be deported while the court considers a legal challenge brought by his lawyers
- One of Khalil’s lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, told the judge that Khalil was “identified, targeted and detained” because of his advocacy for Palestinian rights and his protected speech
Thousands rally against immigration enforcement in subzero Minnesota temperatures
- Protesters have gathered daily in the Twin Cities since Jan. 7, when 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer
MINNEAPOLIS: Police arrested about 100 clergy demonstrating against immigration enforcement at Minnesota’s largest airport Friday, and thousands gathered in downtown Minneapolis despite Arctic temperatures to protest the Trump administration’s crackdown.
The protests are part of a broader movement against President Donald Trump’s increased immigration enforcement across the state, with labor unions, progressive organizations and clergy urging Minnesotans to stay away from work, school and even shops. The faith leaders gathered at the airport to protest deportation flights and urge airlines to call for an end to to what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest-ever immigration enforcement operation.
The clergy were issued misdemeanor citations of trespassing and failure to comply with a peace officer and were then released, said Jeff Lea, a Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman. They were arrested outside the main terminal at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport because they went beyond the reach of their permit for demonstrating and disrupted airline operations, he said.
Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard of Hamline Church in St. Paul said police ordered them to leave but she and others decided to stay and be arrested to show support for migrants, including members of her congregation who are afraid to leave their homes. She planned to go back to her church after her brief detention to hold a prayer vigil.
“We cannot abide living under this federal occupation of Minnesota,” Tollgaard said.
Protesters demand ICE leave Minnesota
The Rev. Elizabeth Barish Browne traveled from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to participate in the rally in downtown Minneapolis, where the high temperature was minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) despite a bright sun.
“What’s happening here is clearly immoral,” the Unitarian Universalist minister said. “It’s definitely chilly, but the kind of ice that’s dangerous to us is not the weather.”
Protesters have gathered daily in the Twin Cities since Jan. 7, when 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Federal law enforcement officers have repeatedly squared off with community members and activists who track their movements.
Sam Nelson said he skipped work so he could join the march. He said he’s a former student of the Minneapolis high school where federal agents detained someone after class earlier this month. That arrest led to altercations between federal officers and bystanders.
“It’s my community,” Nelson said. “Like everyone else, I don’t want ICE on our streets.”
Organizers said Friday morning that more than 700 businesses statewide have closed in solidarity with the movement, from a bookstore in tiny Grand Marais near the Canadian border to the landmark Guthrie Theater in downtown Minneapolis.
“We’re achieving something historic,” said Kate Havelin of Indivisible Twin Cities, one of the more than 100 participating groups.
Detention of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old
A 2-year-old was reunited with her mother Friday, a day after she was detained with her father outside of their home in South Minneapolis, lawyer Irina Vaynerman told The Associated Press.
Vaynerman said they had quickly challenged the family’s detention in federal court. The petition states that the child, a citizen of Ecuador, was brought to the US as a newborn. The child and her father, Elvis Tipan Echeverria, both have a pending asylum application and neither are subject to final orders of removal.
A US district judge on Thursday had barred the government from transferring the toddler out of state, but she and her father were on a commercial flight to Texas about 20 minutes later, according to court filings. They were flown back Friday.
Agents arrested Tipan Echeverria during a targeted operation, according to a DHS statement said. DHS said the child’s mother was in the area but refused to take the child.
Vaynerman rejected that explanation, saying Tipan Echeverria was “not allowed” to bring his 2-year-old to her mother inside their home.
DHS repeated its allegation Friday that the father of 5-year-old Liam Ramos abandoned him during his arrest by immigration officers in Columbia Heights on Tuesday, leading to the child being detained, too.
Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Liam was detained because his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, “fled from the scene.” The two are detained together at the Dilley Detention Center in Texas, which is intended to hold families. McLaughlin said officers tried to get Liam’s mother to take him, but she refused to accept custody.
The family’s attorney Marc Prokosch said he thinks the mother refused to open the door to the ICE officers because she was afraid she would be detained. Columbia Heights district superintendent Zena Stenvik said Liam was “used as bait.”
Prokosch found nothing in state records to suggest Liam’s father has a criminal history.
On Friday, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino sought to shift the narrative away from Liam’s detention by attacking the news media for, in his view, insufficient coverage of children who have lost parents to violence by people in the country illegally. After briefly mentioning the 5-year-old during a news conference, he talked about a mother of five who was killed in August 2023.
Details from Good’s autopsy
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner posted an initial autopsy report online for Good that classified her death as a homicide and determined she died from “multiple gunshots wounds.”
A more detailed independent autopsy commissioned by Good’s family said one bullet pierced the left side her head and exited on the right side. This autopsy, released Wednesday through the Romanucci & Blandin law firm, said bullets also struck her in the arm and breast, although those injuries weren’t immediately life-threatening.
Antonio Romanucci, an attorney for the family, said in a statement that the family is still awaiting the full report from the medical examiner and “hope that they communicate with Renee’s family and share their report before releasing any further information to the public.”
A spokesperson for the firm said there were no funeral plans to share yet.
