Columbia graduate remains in custody after frantic day of appeals

By Patricia Hurtado and Anika Arora Seth

 

A Columbia University graduate who participated in pro-Palestinian protests will remain in custody at an immigration facility after a federal judge said the government could detain him over alleged problems with his green card application. 

US District Judge Michael Farbiarz’s decision Friday is a setback for the student, Mahmoud Khalil, after the judge seemingly opened the door to his possible release earlier this week. But after new filings from the Trump administration, the judge said any challenge to his detention should be made to other courts.

 

“A number of avenues are now available to the petitioner, including a bail application to the immigration judge presiding over the immigration case,” according to the judge’s order.

 

 

Khalil, 29, who was born in Syria, has become a symbol of the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus protests related to Israel’s war in Gaza with Hamas. A lawful permanent resident, he was arrested March 8 at off-campus Columbia housing and told by US agents that that his student visa and green card had been revoked by the State Department. 

 

Farbiarz’s order caps a busy day of legal maneuvering after the judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration couldn’t detain or deport Khalil based on claims that his participation in pro-Palestinian protests compromised US foreign policy. The judge, however, paused his decision until Friday at 9:30 a.m. to allow the government to appeal.

 

When the deadline passed without a challenge, his lawyers pressed the judge to immediately release Khalil, who earned a master’s degree from Columbia. The judge set another deadline for 1:30 p.m.

 

In their filing, the government emphasized that Farbiarz limited his decision on Wednesday to free speech issues and allowed the detention to continue in relation to the green card issues. The judge sided with the Justice Department in his final decision, shortly before 4 p.m.

 

A lawyer for Khalil said that the government is using “cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father’s Day as a family.”

 

“Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in ICE detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians,” the lawyer, Amy Greer, said in a statement. “It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”

 

The government argues Khalil left some information about his employment history and memberships off of his green card application, including prior work for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees or his membership of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the controversial coalition of student grounds at Columbia that advocates for an academic boycott of and divestment from companies linked to Israel. Khalil disputes the government’s claims.

 

Earlier this week, however, Farbiarz expressed skepticism that he would allow Khalil’s detention based on the green card issue.

 

“The evidence is that lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained pending removal for the sort of alleged omissions in a lawful-permanent-resident application that the Petitioner is charged with here,” Farbiarz said Wednesday.