A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that Mahmoud Khalil can be deported.
Khalil, who as a Columbia University graduate student led pro-Palestinian protests there last year, was detained last month after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had determined that Khalil’s activism was antisemitic and that allowing him to remain in the country would undermine a U.S. foreign policy goal of combatting antisemitism around the world.
In a hearing at the remote Louisiana detention center where Khalil is being held, Judge Jamee Comans said she had no authority to question Rubio’s determination.
Khalil will not immediately be deported. His attorneys have said that if he were ordered deported, they would appeal the judge’s ruling. Comans gave Khalil until April 23 to request a stay of his deportation if his attorneys believe he qualifies for one. And the judge said if they don’t meet that deadline, she will order him deported either to Syria, where he was born, or to Algeria, where he is a citizen.
Khalil, who has a green card, is a lawful permanent resident. In ordering Khalil’s deportation, Rubio relied on a rarely used federal statute from the 1950s that played a major role in shaping American immigration during the Cold War. The McCarran-Walter Act, or the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952, gives the secretary of state authority to decide that a noncitizen’s presence in the United States threatens the country’s foreign policy goals.
Khalil, 30, was arrested March 8 at the university-owned apartment building in New York City where he lives with his wife, a U.S. citizen who is pregnant. He was transported to the Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, La., where he has been held since.
While Friday’s hearing took place in immigration court, a separate case is playing out in federal court in New Jersey over whether Khalil should have been arrested and detained.
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