A Louisiana judge has ordered activist and former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil to be deported to either Syria or Algeria for allegedly failing to disclose information on his green card application.
The development was revealed in documents filed in federal court by Khalil’s attorneys on Wednesday.
“This Court further finds that the Respondent understood the consequences and that the candid disclosure of his affiliations might lead to an additional line of questioning and the ultimate denial of his application for conditional permanent residency. This Court finds that Respondent’s lack of candor on his I-485 was not an oversight by an uninformed, uneducated applicant. This Court finds that the Respondent’s purposeful, non-disclosure was not a misrepresentation by another which imputed consequences to the Respondent,” said immigration judge Jamee Comans in her order.
Comans’s order comes despite a June ruling from New Jersey District Judge Michael E. Farbiarz, which determined that the Trump administration cannot detain or deport Khalil while the court considers whether or not he is being targeted over his Palestine advocacy.
Khalil’s attorneys have sent a letter to Farbiarz, informing him that they will challenge the Comans’s decision.
“It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech. Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again,”said Khalil in a statement. “When their first effort to deport me was set to fail, they resorted to fabricating baseless and ridiculous allegations in a bid to silence me for speaking out and standing firmly with Palestine, demanding an end to the ongoing genocide. Such fascist tactics will never deter me from continuing to advocate for my people’s liberation.”
“When the immigration prosecutor, judge, and jailor all answer to Donald Trump, and that one man is eager to weaponize the system in a desperate bid to silence Mahmoud Khalil, a U.S. permanent resident whose only supposed sin is that he stands against an ongoing genocide in Palestine, this is the result,”said Ramzi Kassem, co-director of CLEAR and a member of Khalil’s legal team. “A plain-as-day First Amendment violation that also puts on sharp display the rapidly freefalling credibility of the entire U.S. immigration system.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) condemned the ruling in a social media post.
“The Trump Administration’s illegal abduction and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil has always been in retaliation for speaking out against U.S. complicity in the genocide in Palestine,” she tweeted. “They’re continuing to weaponize immigration courts and will stop at nothing to try and silence him.”
Khalil was arrested by federal agents in New York City on March 8. Despite being a permanent U.S. resident, his green card and student visa were revoked. He was held at a Louisiana detention facility for 104 days before being released in June. He has never been charged with a crime.
Prior to his arrest, Khalil had attended Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and had been a lead negotiator for Palestine activists during the university’s Gaza Solidarity encampments.
Khalil’s case was just one part of the Trump administration’s war on Palestine activism, which has been carried out under the guise of an effort to stop antisemitism. The crackdown has included deportations, federal investigations, and the withholding of funding to multiple universities.
Many of the White House’s tactics had been laid out in Project Esther, a policy plan unveiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in 2024.
Many schools have willingly complied with the administration’s repression. This month, the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) provided the Department of Education with the private information of more than 150 students, staff, and faculty for Trump’s antisemitism probe.
“It is obvious that the Department of Education and UC Berkeley are using the very office meant to protect civil rights as a Trojan horse to silence anyone who condemns the genocide of the Palestinian people, target those who reject the conflation of Judaism with the genocidal Zionist regime, and disempower those of us who call on our academic institutions to uphold their integrity and honor the BDS mandates that their communities demand,” said the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter in a statement on Instagram.
Even without the superfluous comma, the whole sentence is gobbledegook.
Trump cannot act alone. No dictator can. They do what they do with the support of people who might be afraid, might be greedy, might be power-hungry, might actually think they’re doing the right thing, but have some independent agency. Hitler had them, Stalin had them, Trump has them.
Regardless of wether one supports his right to organize and protest Israeli policy, the existence of Zionism or Israel and possibly even Jews, (being that Jews worldwide poll at approx 85 to 90% as identifying as Zionist to some degree) and commit the acts he did at Columbia (which apparently are filmed and extensively recorded) this is not the reason he was ordered deported. Ayes the liberal activist NJ judge can hold things up but but not for one. And Yes, the current admin has made no attempt to hide its contempt for immigrants , wether already naturalized or in the process engaging in what it considers anti Americanism it is irrelevant.
As the other jurisdictional judge in the southern district found that Khalil in actually and in reality did fail to disclose, omit or intentionally mislead on his US application form. And, unless people want t assume he was some greenhorn dumb cluck who was too naive to understand exactly what he was omitting and why then he will be deported because that is the basic law. Of course we know that 1000s of other immigrant applicants commit similar omissions with the similar motivations to khalil. But he broke the cardinal rule of those, both naturalized or in the process who know they want to engage in protest against the govt. He was LOUD and PUBLIC about it. He sought out or drew in publicity and spoke to the public. . He made himself known to the media and public long before his current troubles. Still……not why he’s being deported
. And, from what info that is publicly available we know that at the very least, his job in Beirut was absolutely an affiliation that would have drawn at the least focused scrutiny and likely rejection and was a direct violation of the basic application law. . Of course his billion dollar legal team I’m guessing in whole or part is funded by the psychotic tyrant jihadist ayatollah regime and his personal banking family Qatar, They will almost surely try to heavily influence the msm to keep pushing the theory of his being targeted for Palestine activism as this is their ONLY strategy they have and they can not deny the false application. High drama and theatrics can be expected along with civil disobedience as we know it’s got endless funding for organizing and bail money if needed. . . And even with delays or protests and the activist NJ judge it’s almost certain that in the end he’ll be deported because he willfully lied on his application and was caught