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    Mahmoud Khalil Meets Infant Son Before Immigration Hearing

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    The activist, who has been detained in Louisiana for two months, was allowed to meet privately with his wife and baby. He is fighting deportation.Mahmoud Khalil met his month-old son for the first time on Thursday morning, hours before an immigration court hearing in which his lawyers will seek to convince a judge that he would be in mortal danger if deported.Trump administration officials were initially reluctant to allow Mr. Khalil, who has been detained in Louisiana for two months, to meet privately with his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, and the baby, Deen. They said that other detainees were not allowed such visits, and that it would be unsafe to allow Dr. Abdalla and the baby into a secured part of the facility.But after hours of negotiation Wednesday evening the officials relented, paving the way for a family meeting before Mr. Khalil’s immigration hearing Thursday morning.Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and one of the leading figures in pro-Palestinian protests at the school, was arrested in March and quickly transported to Jena, La. Though he is a legal permanent resident, the Trump administration is seeking to deport him, arguing that his presence in the United States helps spread antisemitism.Students at a Columbia University graduation held photos of Mahmoud Khalil, who had been a student there.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesMr. Khalil’s lawyers have cited instances in which their client has spoken out explicitly against antisemitism; they say his monthslong detention is retaliation for pro-Palestinian speech.Mr. Khalil’s case is playing out in two courtrooms thousands of miles from each other, in Louisiana and Newark.The hearing on Thursday is taking place in immigration court in Jena. The judge there, Jamee Comans, has found that the government has met its burden to deport Mr. Khalil. But Mr. Khalil’s lawyers on Thursday will have a chance to argue that she should nonetheless let him stay, given the danger he might face were he to be deported, likely to Syria or Algeria.“Given the government’s false claims that Mahmoud is antisemitic, and that he is pro-Hamas and that he is a ‘terrorist,’ he is at risk of harm anywhere in the world,” said a lawyer for Mr. Khalil, Johnny Sinodis, at a news conference before the hearing.The lawyers are also seeking to end the proceeding altogether, arguing that Mr. Khalil was arrested without a warrant. In response, administration officials have argued that in March, when Mr. Khalil was arrested, he was attempting to flee, justifying a warrantless arrest. Video footage of the encounter shows no such attempt.Mr. Khalil was the first of several pro-Palestinian protesters to be arrested, setting off concerns about free speech and due process during the second Trump administration.Those concerns are being considered in New Jersey by a federal district judge, Michael E. Farbiarz. While other protesters have been released on bail, Judge Farbiarz has not yet decided whether Mr. Khalil can go free. More

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      U.S. Fights to Keep Mahmoud Khalil From Holding His Month-Old Child

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      A judge ordered the Trump administration to let Mr. Khalil meet with his wife and infant son before a hearing on his immigration case. It was unclear whether they would be separated by plexiglass.On Wednesday evening, hours before the latest immigration hearing in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump administration was in the midst of pitched battle to prevent Mr. Khalil from holding his 1-month-old son.Lawyers for Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who was a leading figure in pro-Palestinian protests on the campus, have been fighting for days to win him what is known as a “contact visit” with his wife and child. Mr. Khalil, who is being detained in Louisiana, has not seen his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, in person since he was arrested in March, and has never met their son, Deen, who was born on April 21.On Wednesday, a New Jersey judge, Michael E. Farbiarz, ordered the administration to allow Mr. Khalil to hold a single joint meeting with his wife and his lawyers. But it was unclear whether the judge’s order would permit Mr. Khalil to meet his son, given Trump officials’ reluctance to allow such a visit.“Granting Khalil this relief of family visitation would effectively grant him a privilege that no other detainee receives,” Justice Department officials wrote in a court filing on Wednesday. “Allowing Dr. Abdalla and a newborn to attend a legal meeting would turn a legal visitation into a family one.”Their filing also included an affidavit from Brian Acuna, the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in New Orleans.“Because the facility does not house female detainees or minors, it is unsafe to allow Mr. Khalil’s wife and newborn child into a secured part of the facility,” Mr. Acuna wrote, adding that a contact visit had “never been offered to any other detainee.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Official Pushed to Rewrite Intelligence So It Could Not Be ‘Used Against’ Trump

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      An assessment contradicted a presidential proclamation. A political appointee demanded a redo, then pushed for changes to the new analysis, too.New emails document how a top aide to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, ordered analysts to edit an assessment with the hope of insulating President Trump and Ms. Gabbard from being attacked for the administration’s claim that Venezuela’s government controls a criminal gang.“We need to do some rewriting” and more analytic work “so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS,” Joe Kent, the chief of staff to Ms. Gabbard, wrote in an email to a group of intelligence officials on April 3, using shorthand for Ms. Gabbard’s position and for the president of the United States.The New York Times reported last week that Mr. Kent had pushed analysts to redo their assessment, dated Feb. 26, of the relationship between Venezuela’s government and the gang, Tren de Aragua, after it came to light that the assessment contradicted a subsequent claim by Mr. Trump. The disclosure of the precise language of Mr. Kent’s emails has added to the emerging picture of a politicized intervention.The final memo, which is dated April 7 and has since become public, still contradicts a key claim that Mr. Trump made to justify sending people accused of being members of the gang to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process.Emails on the topic from Mr. Kent, who is also Mr. Trump’s pending nominee to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, have circulated within the intelligence community and were described by people briefed on them. Mr. Kent’s interventions have raised internal alarms about politicizing intelligence analysis.Defenders of Mr. Kent have disputed that his attempted intervention was part of a pressure campaign, arguing he was trying to show more of what the intelligence community knew about the gang.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Federal Courts Buck Trump Deportation Schemes, Focusing on Due Process Rights

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      The Trump administration’s aggressive push to deport migrants has run up against resistance from the judiciary.If there has been a common theme in the federal courts’ response to the fallout from President Trump’s aggressive deportation policies, it is that the White House cannot rush headlong into expelling people by sidestepping the fundamental principle of due process.In case after case, a legal bottom line is emerging: Immigrants should at least be given the opportunity to challenge their deportations, especially as Trump officials have claimed novel and extraordinary powers to remove them.The latest and clearest expression of that view came on Friday evening, when the Supreme Court chided the Trump administration for seeking to provide only a day’s warning to a group of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas it had been trying to deport under the expansive powers of an 18th-century wartime law.“Notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal,” the justices wrote, “surely does not pass muster.”While many questions remain to be answered about Mr. Trump’s deportation plans, many legal scholars have hailed courts’ support of due process. At the same time, they have also expressed concern that such support was needed in the first place.“It’s great that courts are standing up for one of the most basic principles that underlie our constitutional order — that ‘persons’ (not ‘citizens’) are entitled to due process before being deprived of life, liberty, or property,” Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote in an email. “It would be even better if the administration would simply cease violating such principles.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Afrikaner Granted Refugee Status by Trump Is Linked to Antisemitic Posts

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      The Trump administration has tried to deport foreign-born protesters for what it calls antisemitic speech. On Monday, the administration resettled an Afrikaner who had a track record of it.One of the first white South African refugees to arrive in the United States on Monday appears to have made antisemitic comments on social media — grounds the Trump administration has tried to use to deport foreign-born pro-Palestinian activists and deny immigration requests.The refugee, Charl Kleinhaus, 46, formerly of Limpopo, South Africa, landed in Washington on a chartered jet on Monday with dozens of other Afrikaners, the white ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid. They were given safe haven in the United States by an administration that has made it virtually impossible for any other group to become refugees, including Afghans who helped American forces in their country.“We just packed our bags and left,” Mr. Kleinhaus said after landing, for “safety reasons.”White South Africans say they have been discriminated against, including being denied job opportunities and suffering racial violence, though the specifics of the refugees’ cases are unclear. Mr. Kleinhaus and his family traveled onward from Washington to Buffalo, N.Y.In April 2023, the X account @charlkleinhaus wrote in a now-deleted post that Jews were “untrustworthy” and “a dangerous group” and that “they are not Gods chosen.”The bio in the account sharing Mr. Kleinhaus’s name says it belongs to an Afrikaner. The account also reshared posts praising President Trump and calling for the beating of a U.S. citizen. It also shared a mix of pro- and anti-Israel posts.In October 2023, the account shared a video of Christian worshipers clashing with Israeli police that had been posted on a Facebook account called “Israel is a terrorist state.” @charlkleinhaus captioned the video “Jews attacking Christians!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Allow Venezuelan Deportations to Resume

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      The solicitor general contended that a group of migrants had barricaded themselves inside a Texas detention center and threatened to take hostages.The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday evening for permission to deport a group of nearly 200 Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members and detained in Texas.In a filing to the court, the administration contended that “serious difficulties have arisen” from the detention of the group of 176 migrants, who were shielded from deportation in an emergency overnight ruling by the court in mid-April.According to a declaration by a Homeland Security Department official included in the court filing, a group of 23 migrants had barricaded themselves inside a housing unit for several hours on April 26. The group threatened to take hostages and harm immigration officers, and tried to flood the unit by clogging the toilets, according to the filing.“The government has a strong interest in promptly removing from the country” gang members “who pose a danger to ICE officers, facility staff and other detainees while in detention,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the court filing.The details of the episode, which had not been previously reported, occurred at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Texas, where migrants “barricaded the entrance doors of their housing unit using bed cots, blocked the windows and covered surveillance cameras,” according to a declaration by Joshua D. Johnson, a Homeland Security official and the acting director of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement’s Dallas Field Office.The group then “threatened to take hostages” and to “injure” ICE officers and facility staff members, and “remained barricaded in the housing unit for several hours,” Mr. Johnson said in the declaration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Plans to Send Migrants to Libya on a Military Flight

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      Human rights groups have called conditions in the country’s network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane, according to U.S. officials, another sharp escalation in a deportation program that has sparked widespread legal challenges and intense political debate.The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear, but a flight to Libya carrying the deportees could leave as soon as Wednesday, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.The decision to send deportees to Libya was striking. The country is racked with conflict, and human rights groups have called conditions in its network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”The Libya operation falls in line with the Trump administration’s effort to not only deter migrants from trying to enter the country illegally but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that they can be deported to countries where they could face brutal conditions. Reuters earlier reported the possibility of a U.S. deportation flight to Libya.The planning for the flight to Libya has been tightly held, and could still be derailed by logistical, legal or diplomatic obstacles.The White House declined to comment. The State Department and Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Wavers When Asked About Due Process Rights and His Constitutional Duties

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      President Trump repeatedly answered “I don’t know” when asked in a TV interview whether every person on American soil was entitled to due process, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.President Trump said in an interview that aired on Sunday that he did not know whether every person on American soil was entitled to due process, despite constitutional guarantees, and complained that adhering to that principle would result in an unmanageable slowdown of his mass deportation program.The revealing exchange, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” was prompted by the interviewer Kristen Welker asking Mr. Trump if he agreed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio that citizens and noncitizens in the United States were entitled to due process.“I don’t know,” Mr. Trump replied. “I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”Ms. Welker reminded the president that the Fifth Amendment says as much.“I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said again. “It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.” Left unmentioned was how anyone could be sure these people were undocumented immigrants, let alone criminals, without hearings.Mr. Trump responded “I don’t know” one more time and referred to his “brilliant lawyers” when Ms. Welker asked whether, as president, he needed to “uphold the Constitution of the United States.”The comments came amid the many legal challenges to the administration’s agenda, especially Mr. Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign, and as top administration officials have begun to question the president’s obligation to provide due process. Mr. Trump has attacked judges, called for their impeachment and ignored a Supreme Court ruling directing his administration to facilitate the return of a migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly sent to a prison for terrorists in El Salvador.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Sues Colorado and Denver Over Immigration Policies

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      The lawsuit, which names the governor and mayor as defendants, is the latest move by the White House to try to get local governments to cooperate more with its immigration agenda.The Trump administration sued Colorado and Denver on Friday, accusing the state, city and their leaders of impeding federal immigration actions, the latest salvo in the White House’s fight to compel local governments to help carry out deportations.The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Colorado and includes Gov. Jared Polis and Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver as defendants, specifically challenges state and city laws that restrict or prohibit cooperation with federal agencies.One state law prohibits officers from holding someone solely on the basis of a civil immigration detainer, a request that a detainee not be released. Other state laws prevent state and local officials from sharing information with federal immigration authorities and stop local jails from working with the federal government to house people detained for civil immigration violations.The lawsuit also challenges a Denver measure that bans the use of city resources to assist with immigration enforcement, and a 2017 executive order from the mayor that aimed to “establish Denver as a safe and welcoming city for all.”The lawsuit asks the court to rule the laws unconstitutional and prohibit their enforcement.“This is a suit to put an end to those disastrous policies and restore the supremacy of federal immigration law,” the lawsuit said.Many liberal-leaning states and cities have laws that keep local police departments mostly removed from immigration enforcement activity, as a way to build trust with immigrant communities. Democratic officials in several cities say that the policies help immigrants feel comfortable reporting crimes and interacting with health departments and schools.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More