By Luc Cohen and Jonathan Allen
NEWARK, New Jersey – Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil will remain behind bars in Louisiana at least until a U.S. judge decides whether the Palestinian activist should challenge his imprisonment in a federal court there or in New Jersey.
President Donald Trump’s administration argues that Khalil’s challenge should be heard in Louisiana where he is now detained and where any appeals would be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative in the country.
U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz in Newark, New Jersey, did not say on Friday when he would rule but said it was his hope that “judges are judges, and they’re going to see things the same way in whatever place.”
The Trump administration is defending the arrest of Khalil by immigration agents this month in a case that tests the government’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian activists who have not been charged with any crime.
Khalil’s lawyers have asked Farbiarz to release him from jail in Louisiana while he challenges the government’s effort to deport him in a separate case in immigration court. They say Trump’s administration improperly targeted him for his political views and prominence in student protests.
They say Khalil, 30, should be with his wife Noor Abdalla, a U.S. citizen who attended Friday’s hearing, for the birth of their first child in April. He spent several hours in a New Jersey detention facility after his arrest in neighboring Manhattan.
The government has asked the judge either to move the case to a federal court in Louisiana or to dismiss the proceeding so Khalil can challenge his arrest in Louisiana.
The Trump administration said it has revoked the visas of hundreds of foreign students it says took part in the protests that swept college campuses protesting the U.S. government’s military support of Israel. The government says Khalil and other international students who take part are harming U.S. foreign policy interests.
Born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Khalil arrived in the U.S. on a student visa in 2022 and became a legal permanent resident last year.
The government has accused Khalil of not disclosing in his application that he was what it called a “member” of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency known as UNRWA. UNRWA and his lawyers said Khalil completed an unpaid internship at UNRWA’s New York office as part of his Columbia master’s degree program, which was listed on his application.
The government also accused Khalil of failing to disclose what it described as his “continued employment” in the British embassy in Beirut “beyond 2022.”
Khalil’s lawyers say he correctly put on the application that he left the job when he left Beirut, and a spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said earlier this month that Khalil ended his employment with the embassy more than two years ago.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in Newark and Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Kate Holton in London; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)
