Khalil, Mahmoud (Activist)

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      Judge Says Khalil’s Deportation Case Can Be Heard in New Jersey

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      The Trump administration has sought to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate, though he is a legal permanent resident and has not been charged with a crime.A New York federal judge on Wednesday transferred the case of a Columbia University graduate detained by the Trump administration this month to New Jersey, where his lawyers will continue their efforts to seek his release.The order will not have any immediate effect on the detention status of the Columbia graduate, Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestinian protests on the university’s campus, who after his arrest was swiftly transferred from Manhattan to New Jersey and then to Louisiana. The Trump administration has sought to deport him, though he is a legal permanent resident who has not been accused of a crime.The White House has said that Mr. Khalil spread antisemitism and promoted literature associated with Hamas terrorists. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers deny that he has done so and say he is being retaliated against for promoting Palestinian rights and criticizing Israel, views that the Trump administration disagrees with.Mr. Khalil’s legal team had been trying to move his case out of Louisiana since he was transferred there. Had his case been heard there, a conservative appeals court in New Orleans could have set a broad precedent for deportations.The New York judge, Jesse Furman, ordered federal authorities not to remove Mr. Khalil from the country. On Wednesday, in moving the case to New Jersey, he left that order in place.Mr. Khalil himself is expected to remain in Louisiana until a new judge weighs in.Judge Furman noted that Mr. Khalil’s lawyers had accused the government of punishing him for participation in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and that his First and Fifth Amendment rights had been violated.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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      Read the Order Transferring Mahmoud Khalil’s Case to New Jersey

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      Case 1:25-cv-01935-JME Document 78 Filed 03/19/25
      Page 28 of 33
      Cnty., No. 24-CV-3850 (LTS), 2024 WL 3318225, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. June 17, 2024); Bynum v.
      N.J., No. 24-CV-618 (LTS), 2024 WL 1023210, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 26, 2024); Moussaoui v.
      Biden, No. 25-CV-691 (JGK), 2025 WL 457804, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 28, 2025); Darboe v.
      Ahrendt, 442 F. Supp. 3d 592, 596 (S.D.N.Y. 2020); see also, e.g., United States v. Posey, No.
      16-CR-87 (RJA), 2023 WL 7124522, at *2 (W.D.N.Y. Oct. 30, 2023) (noting a court’s “broad
      discretion” under Section 1406(a) “to transfer a habeas case to the proper judicial district”).
      Section 1406(a) provides for transfer “to any district . . . in which [the case] could have
      been brought.” Id. (emphasis added). By its plain terms, therefore, the statute calls for transfer
      of Khalil’s Petition to the District of New Jersey, the only district in which due to the
      immediate-custodian and district-of-confinement rules his “core” claims “could have been
      brought” at 4:40 a.m. on March 9, 2025. See, e.g., Alvarado v. Gillis, No. 22-CV-10082 (JLR)
      (KHP), 2023 WL 5417157 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 3, 2023), report and recommendation adopted, 2023
      WL 5396499 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 22, 2023) (ordering transfer of an immigration habeas petition to
      the district where the petitioner was detained at the time of filing); Ali v. DHS/ICE/Dep’t of
      Justice, No. 19-CV-8645 (LGS), 2020 WL 3057383, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. June 9, 2020) (same);
      Persaud v. ICE, No. 04-CV-282 (FB), 2004 WL 1936213, at *1 (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 31, 2004)
      (“Although petitioner is currently confined in Alabama, at the time that he filed this petition he
      was confined in the Western District of Louisiana. Accordingly, the Court orders the petition to
      be transferred to the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.”); cf.
      Fuentes v. Choate, No. 24-CV-1377 (NYW), 2024 WL 2978285, at *10-11 (D. Colo. June 13,
      2024) (observing that when transfer is necessary due to improper venue under Padilla, “many
      courts choose to transfer habeas cases” to the district where the action “could have been brought
      at the time it was filed or noticed”). Indeed, the Court cannot do otherwise because where, as
      here, “a federal statute covers the point in dispute,” “that is the end of the matter; federal courts
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      How a Columbia Student Fled to Canada After ICE Came Looking for Her

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      Ranjani Srinivasan’s student visa was revoked by U.S. immigration authorities. That was just the start of her odyssey.The first knock at the door came eight days ago, on a Friday morning.Three federal immigration agents showed up at a Columbia University apartment searching for Ranjani Srinivasan, who had recently learned her student visa had been revoked. Ms. Srinivasan, an international student from India, did not open the door.She was not home when the agents showed up again the next night, just hours before a former Columbia student living in campus housing, Mahmoud Khalil, was detained, roiling the university. Ms. Srinivasan packed a few belongings, left her cat behind with a friend and jumped on a flight to Canada at LaGuardia Airport.When the agents returned a third time, this past Thursday night, and entered her apartment with a judicial warrant, she was gone.“The atmosphere seemed so volatile and dangerous,” Ms. Srinivasan, 37, said on Friday in an interview with The New York Times, her first public remarks since leaving. “So I just made a quick decision.”Ms. Srinivasan, a Fulbright recipient who was pursuing a doctoral degree in urban planning, was caught in the dragnet of President Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrators through the use of federal immigration powers. She is one of a handful of noncitizens that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has targeted at Columbia in recent days.In the week since that first knock at the door, Ms. Srinivasan says she has struggled to understand why the State Department abruptly revoked her student visa without explanation, leading Columbia to withdraw her enrollment from the university because her legal status had been terminated.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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      New Yorkers Protest as White House Defends Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia

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      Hundreds of demonstrators marched downtown while a spokeswoman for President Trump said the president had the authority to detain Mahmoud Khalil.As hundreds of demonstrators made their way through Lower Manhattan on Tuesday to protest the detention of a prominent pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University, the White House defended the arrest and rebuked the school for what it called lack of cooperation.The activist, Mahmoud Khalil, was a leader of student protests on Columbia’s campus and often served as a negotiator and spokesman. Mr. Khalil, 30, who is Palestinian and was born and raised in Syria, is a legal permanent resident of the United States and is married to an American citizen.He was arrested on Saturday and transferred to detention in Louisiana.A spokeswoman for President Trump, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters on Tuesday that the government had the authority to revoke Mr. Khalil’s green card under the Immigration and Nationality Act.“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” she said.Her remarks came a day after Mr. Trump vowed that the apprehension of Mr. Khalil was “the first arrest of many to come.”Some free speech groups and civil rights activists have questioned the legality of Mr. Khalil’s detention, which his lawyers have challenged in court. On Tuesday, some New York Democrats expressed concern about the arrest. But Mayor Eric Adams shrugged off questions about it at a City Hall news conference, saying that the federal government, not the city, had authority over the matter.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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      The U.S. Is Trying to Deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Legal Resident. Here’s What to Know.

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      Mr. Khalil, who helped lead protests at Columbia University against high civilian casualties in Gaza, was arrested by immigration officers and sent to a detention center in Louisiana.The Trump administration invoked an obscure statute over the weekend in moving to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the United States who recently graduated from Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against high civilian casualties in Gaza during Israel’s campaign against Hamas.Mr. Khalil was arrested by immigration officers on Saturday and then sent to a detention center in Louisiana. On Monday, a federal judge in New York, Jesse M. Furman, ordered the federal government not to deport Mr. Khalil while he reviewed a petition challenging the legality of the detention.Here’s what to know about the administration’s attempt to deport Mr. Khalil.Who is the Columbia graduate?Mr. Khalil, 30, earned a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December. He has Palestinian heritage and is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.At Columbia last spring, Mr. Khali assumed a major role in student-led protests on campus against Israel’s war efforts in Gaza. He described his position as a negotiator and spokesman for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian group.What’s the legal basis for his arrest?The Trump administration did not publicly lay out the legal authority for the arrest. But two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio relied on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives him sweeping power to expel foreigners.The provision says that any “alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”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