US government depriving Mahmoud Khalil of access to legal team, lawyer says

Columbia University post-graduate faces deportation after taking part in pro-Palestinian protests

Pro-Palestinian protesters at a rally in support of Mahmoud Khalil in New York on Wednesday. AFP

A federal judge on Wednesday refused to order the release of post-graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who faces deportation after taking part in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University in New York last year.

The move means Mr Khalil must stay in an immigration detention centre in Louisiana, making it harder for him to speak to his legal team, lawyers have argued.

Immigration enforcement agents arrested Mr Khalil, 30, a permanent US resident who is married to an American citizen, in New York on Saturday. He was later moved to Louisiana.

Hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside a federal courthouse in New York to support Mr Khalil, whose wife is eight months pregnant.

During a brief court hearing, government lawyer Brandon Waterman argued that the New York federal judge does not have jurisdiction to adjudicate over Mr Khalil's challenge to his arrest. Mr Waterman said the case should be heard either in New Jersey or Louisiana, the two locations where Mr Khalil was held after his arrest.

Speaking to The National after the hearing, Diala Shamas, one of Mr Khalil's lawyers, said the government appears determined to keep him away from his legal team.

“Essentially, the government is trying to remove him to Louisiana, far away from his legal counsel, in order to expedite his removal proceedings over there, in highly unusual circumstances,” Ms Shamas said. “Certainly it's interfering in his access to counsel.”

She said the US was invoking a seldom used provision in immigration law. “It's rarely invoked because it is so broad and really an authoritarian tool. Again, [authorities are] not accusing him of any security threat of any illegal activity, anything like that. They're simply accusing him of having views that they do not agree with."

According to an immigration agency database, Mr Khalil was born in Syria. When asked to which country the US wants to depart Mr Khalil, Ms Shamas responded: “That's a very good question and I hope we never find out the answer to that.”

Pro-Palestinian activist and actress Susan Sarandon attended the rally and was in the courthouse in New York. She said: “No matter where you stand on genocide, freedom of speech is an issue and a right that we all have, and this is a turning point in the history and the freedom of this country.”

Activist and actress Susan Sarandon joined the rally in New York. EPA

After the arrest, the judge in the case, Jesse Furman, ordered that Mr Khalil not be deported while the court considers the legal challenge made by his lawyers, who want Mr Khalil to be returned to New York and released under supervision. The judge extended that order on Wednesday, and also ordered that Mr Khalil be allowed two hour-long private phone calls with his legal team.

They argue he engaged in protected free speech and that the government was retaliating illegally. Judge Furman asked the government to file written arguments by Friday, with a response due on Monday.

Mr Khalil's wife, who did not wish to be named, gave a statement that one of her husband's lawyers read out at Wednesday's protest. “His disappearance has devastated our lives," it read. "Every day without him is filled with uncertainty, not just for me but for our entire family and community."

Columbia University became the centre of a US pro-Palestinian protest movement that swept across college campuses nationwide last year, leading to more than 2,000 arrests.

President Donald Trump heralded Mr Khalil’s arrest as the first “of many to come,” vowing to deport students he described as engaging in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”.

During a stopover in Ireland while heading from Saudi Arabia to a meeting of the G7 foreign ministers in Canada, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Mr Khalil's case was “not about free speech.”

“This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with,” he said. “No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card.”

Mr Khalil, who acted as a spokesman for protesters at Columbia last year, has not been charged with any crime. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday 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 non-citizen on foreign policy grounds.

Civil rights groups and Mr Khalil’s lawyers say the government is unconstitutionally using its immigration control powers to stop him from speaking out.