A Trump administration official has declared that Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil will be deported to Algeria.
“It looks like he’ll go to Algeria. That’s what the thought is right now,” Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, told NewsNation.
Khalil, a former Columbia University student and lead negotiator during the school’s Gaza protests, was arrested in 2025 and detained at a Louisiana facility for three months on orders from the State Department.
Khalil was never charged with a crime, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that his continued presence in the United States posed “adverse foreign policy consequences” under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
In June 2025, a federal judge ordered Khalil to be released on bail. “There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil,” declared Judge Michael E. Farbiarz during the hearing. “And of course that would be unconstitutional.”
But last week, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the Farbiarz ruling, which reopened the question of Khalil’s fate and prompted McLaughlin’s comments to NewsNation. The new decision will not go into effect right away, and Khalil can’t be re-detained unless the order takes formal effect, which would not happen while he still has the opportunity to seek review.
“Mahmoud cannot be legally detained or deported now because his appeals process has not concluded,” explained Khalil’s legal team in a statement. “But it’s no surprise to hear the government reiterate what has always been its ultimate goal: to impose the extreme punishment of deportation on Mahmoud for his pro-Palestinian speech.”
“The government’s statements only reinforce its disdain for the First Amendment rights of people engaged in lawful protest, and make clear why federal court intervention is so vitally important,” it continued.
Last week, a federal judge unsealed documents confirming that activists like Khalil were arrested because of their pro-Palestine speech. The documents also revealed that the Trump administration had relied on the shadowy doxing site Canary Mission to identify students to target.
The revelation confirms the validity of July 2025 testimony from ICE senior official Peter Hatch, who told a Boston court that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used information from Canary Mission and other websites to open files on about 100 foreign students and scholars.
“Many of the names, or even most of the names, came from that website, but we were getting names and leads from many different websites,” explained Hatch. “We received information on the same protesters from multiple sources, but Canary Mission was the most inclusive. The lists came in from all different directions.”
“Many of us have long been trying to raise alarm bells about the dangers of privately-funded, hate groups such as Canary Mission,” Barnard and Columbia University anthropology professor Nadia Abu El Hajj told Mother Jones. “As testimony at the trial and the trove of newly released documents clearly demonstrate, Canary Mission’s blacklist has serious, material consequences: they have played a central role in providing names of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students to the federal government, calling for their deportation.”
Asked about Trump’s plans to deport Khalil, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the move.
“Mahmoud Khalil is a New Yorker,” Mamdani told reporters. “He should remain in New York City. I see this attack on him as part of a larger attack on the freedom of speech that is especially pronounced when it comes to the use of that speech to stand up for policy to human rights.”
“I will make that clear to everyone, and I have said time and again that he deserves to stay in the city, he deserves to be in the city just like any other New Yorker,” he continued.
“The door may have been opened for potential re-detainment down the line, but it has not closed our commitment to Palestine and to justice and accountability,” said Khalil in a statement after the appeals court’s recent decision. “I will continue to fight, through every legal avenue and with every ounce of determination, until my rights, and the rights of others like me, are fully protected.”
