Mahmoud Khalil

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      Trump news at a glance: US can deport lawful resident for his views in ‘unjust and alarming’ court ruling

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      At the end of a tumultuous week, a US immigration judge has sided with Trump administration lawyers, ruling that Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer Mahmoud Khalil can be deported from the US for his views.The decision came on the same day Trump lawyers were criticized by another judge for defying an order to provide details on how they would return a wrongly deported man to the US.Meanwhile, the US president insisted his tariff war was going “really well” despite mounting fears of recession and Beijing raising its retaliatory tariffs on the US to 125%.Catch up with the key Trump administration stories of the day:Judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for his viewsMahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer, is eligible to be deported from the United States, an immigration judge ruled on Friday during a contentious hearing at a remote court in central Louisiana.The decision sides with the Trump administration’s claim that a short memo written by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, which stated Khalil’s “beliefs and associations” were counter to foreign policy interests, is sufficient evidence to remove a lawful permanent resident from the United States. The undated memo, the main piece of evidence submitted by the government, contained no allegations of criminal conduct.Supporters of Khalil branded the decision as “unjust as it is alarming”.Read the full storyDoJ unable to tell court where wrongly deported man isLawyers for the Trump administration were unable on Friday to tell a federal court exactly where the Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego García is after he was wrongly deported to El Salvador last month. The judge, Paula Xinis, admonished the government at a heated hearing. “I’m not asking for state secrets,” she said. “All I know is that he’s not here. The government was prohibited from sending him to El Salvador, and now I’m asking a very simple question: where is he?”Read the full storyHead of US military base in Greenland fired after JD Vance visitThe head of the US military base in Greenland has been fired for criticising Washington’s agenda for the Arctic island after JD Vance visited two weeks ago.Col Susannah Meyers, who had served as commander of the Pituffik space base since July, was removed amid reports she had distanced herself and the base from the US vice-president’s criticism of Denmark and its oversight of the territory.Read the full storyTrump insists tariff war going ‘really well’Donald Trump insisted his trade war with much of the world was “doing really well” despite mounting fears of recession and as Beijing hit back and again hiked tariffs on US exports to China.As the US president said his aggressive tariffs strategy was “moving along quickly”, a closely watched economic survey revealed that US consumer expectations for price rises had soared to a four-decade high.Read the full storyImmigration agents try to enter LA elementary schoolsImmigration officials attempted to enter two Los Angeles elementary schools this week, but were turned away by school administrators. The incident appears to be the Trump administration’s first attempt to enter the city’s public schools since amending regulations to allow immigration agents to enter “sensitive areas” such as schools.The Los Angeles unified school district superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, confirmed that agents from the Department of Homeland Security were seeking five students in first through sixth grades. They were turned away after the schools’ principals asked to see their identification. Los Angeles Unified is a sanctuary district and does not cooperate with federal immigration agencies.Read the full storyMore law firms make pro bono deals to appease TrumpDonald Trump said on Friday that five major law firms reached agreements to together provide his administration $600m in pro bono legal work, among other terms, to avoid executive orders punishing them, a significant capitulation to the president as he attacks the legal profession.The five firms – Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft – are among the most prestigious and recognized firms in the US.Read the full storyOfficials told to denounce ‘anti-Christian’ colleaguesThe state department is ordering staff to report colleagues for instances of “anti-Christian bias” during the Biden administration, part of Donald Trump’s aggressive push to reshape government policy on religious expression in his first months back in office.Read the full storyTrump ally snipes at musician for Kennedy Center DEI concernsThe Kennedy Center’s interim executive director, Richard Grenell – a staunch ally of Donald Trump – accused a professional musician of “vapidness” after she emailed him over concerns of the now Trump-controlled center’s rollbacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.Read the full storyLaw firms scrap DEI mentions from websitesNearly two dozen US law firms have quietly scrubbed references to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from their website and revised descriptions of pro-bono work to more closely align with Donald Trump’s priorities, a Guardian review has found, underscoring the Trump administration’s successful campaign of intimidation against the legal profession.Read the full storyTrump weakens US defenses against foreign meddling, says reportThe Trump administration has weakened tools the US government uses to combat foreign-influence campaigns, even as covert attempts by Saudi Arabia and other “malign actors” to influence American policy are growing in “scope, sophistication, and reach”, according to a new Senate report.Read the full storyUK man’s tattoo ‘used by US officials’ to identify alleged gang membersA British man was shocked to discover that a photo of his tattoo was included in a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document used to identify alleged members of a notorious Venezuelan criminal gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA).Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The Mississippi library commission has ordered the deletion of two research collections: the race relations database and the gender studies database. The collections were stored in what’s called the Magnolia database, which is used by publicly funded schools, libraries, universities and state agencies in Mississippi.

      Donald Trump’s executive order imposing sanctions on the international criminal court (ICC) is facing a legal challenge from two US human rights advocates who argue it is “unconstitutional and unlawful”.

      California’s $59bn agricultural industry is bracing for disruption as Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to spike tensions and trigger economic turmoil with China – one of the state’s biggest buyers.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 10 April 2025. More

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      US judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for his views

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      Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer, is eligible to be deported from the United States, an immigration judge ruled on Friday during a contentious hearing at a remote court in central Louisiana.The decision sides with the Trump administration’s claim that a short memo written by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, which stated Khalil’s “current or expected beliefs, statements or associations” were counter to foreign policy interests, is sufficient evidence to remove a lawful permanent resident from the United States. The undated memo, the main piece of evidence submitted by the government, contained no allegations of criminal conduct.During a tense hearing on Friday afternoon, Khalil’s attorneys made an array of unsuccessful arguments attempting to both delay a ruling on his eligibility for removal and to terminate proceedings entirely. They argued the broad allegations contained in Rubio’s memo gave them a right to directly cross-examine him.Khalil held prayer beads as three attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security presented arguments for his removal.Judge Jamee Comans ruled that Rubio’s determination was “presumptive and sufficient evidence” and that she had no power to rule on concerns over free speech.“There is no indication that Congress contemplated an immigration judge or even the attorney general overruling the secretary of state on matters of foreign policy,” Comans said.A supporter was in tears sat on the crowded public benches as the ruling was delivered.Following the ruling, Khalil, who had remained silent throughout proceedings, requested permission to speak before the court.Addressing the judge directly, he said: “I would like to quote what you said last time, that ‘there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.’”He continued: “Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process.“This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me is afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”Khalil, 30, helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last year. He was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers in New York on 8 March and transferred to a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he has been detained for over a month. His case was the first in a string of Ice arrests instigated by the Trump administration targeting pro-Palestinian students and scholars present in the US on visas or green cards.The ruling means that Khalil’s removal proceedings will continue to move forward in Jena, while a separate case being heard in federal court in New Jersey examines the legality of his detention and questions surrounding the constitutionality of the government’s claims it can deport people for first amendment-protected speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy.Khalil’s legal team is asking the New Jersey judge to release him on bail so that he can reunite with his wife, who is due to give birth to their first child this month.His lawyers slammed the decision, which they said appeared to be prewritten. “Today, we saw our worst fears play out: Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent. This is not over, and our fight continues,” said Marc van der Hout, Khalil’s immigration lawyer.“If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone over any issue the Trump administration dislikes. We will continue working tirelessly until Mahmoud is free and rightfully returned home to his family and community.”During a short prayer vigil held outside the detention centre on Friday afternoon, a group of interfaith clergy read messages of support. A short statement from Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, who is due to give birth this month, was also delivered in front of reporters.“Today’s decision feels like a devastating blow to our family. No person should be deemed ‘removable’ from their home for speaking out against the killing of Palestinian families, doctors, and journalists,” the statement read.It continued: “In less than a month, Mahmoud and I will welcome our first child. Until we are reunited, I will not stop advocating for my husband’s safe return home.”The New Jersey judge has ordered the government not to remove Khalil as his case plays out in federal court. A hearing in that case is set for later on Friday. More

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      White House may seek legally binding control over Columbia through consent decree – report

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      The Trump administration is considering placing Columbia University under a consent decree, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, a dramatic escalation in the federal government’s crackdown on the Ivy League institution.The university has already accepted a series of changes demanded by the administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal grants and contracts that the government suspended last month over allegations that the school failed to protect students from antisemitism on campus.A consent decree – a binding agreement approved by a federal judge – would be an extraordinary move by the Trump administration, which has threatened government funding as a way to force colleges and universities to comply with Donald Trump’s political objectives on a range of issues from campus protests to transgender women in sports and diversity and inclusion initiatives.As a party to the consent decree, Columbia would have to agree to enter it – and the Journal report states that it is unclear whether such a plan has been discussed by the university board.In a statement to the Guardian, the university did not directly address the report. “The University remains in active dialogue with the Federal Government to restore its critical research funding,” a spokesperson said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the Journal, the proposal comes from the administration’s antisemitism taskforce, composed in part of justice department lawyers, who have reportedly expressed skepticism that Columbia was acting in “good faith”. If Columbia resists, the justice department would need to present its case for the agreement in court, a process that could drag on for years with the university risking its federal funding in the interim.Republicans and the Trump administration have sought to make an example of Columbia University, which was at the center of a student protest movement over Israel’s war in Gaza that broke out on campuses across the country. Last month, federal immigration authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and prominent Palestinian activist who participated in campus protests. He remains in detention.During a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Trump pressed his education secretary, Linda McMahon, to elaborate on the department’s efforts to withhold federal funds from universities that were “not behaving”.“You’re holding back from $400 Columbia?” he asked McMahon. She nodded and named other schools, noting that the administration had frozen nearly $1bn in funding from Cornell.“We’re getting calls from the presidents of universities who really do want to come in and sit down and come in and sit down and have discussions,” she said. “We’re investigating them but in the meantime we’re holding back the grant fund money.” More

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      I’m a Jewish Israeli in the US standing up for Palestine. By Trump’s logic, I’m a terror supporter | Eran Zelnik

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      To Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation:Given recent patterns, the FBI might need to take a hard look at my actions over the years. If Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri and other recent Ice detainees are considered threats to national security, then so am I.I have committed the same acts they have committed, including publishing an article that calls the war in Gaza a genocide, participating in a protest against the genocide in Gaza, speaking and protesting in favor of BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions against Israel), participating in a sit-in at UC Davis about 10 years ago, and being vocal in general about the atrocities committed by Israel against the people of Gaza and Palestinians.Let me tell you a little more about myself and all the additional reasons you might want to investigate and perhaps arrest me. I was born in Israel and became a naturalized US citizen through my American mother. Given the administration’s recent challenges to the 14th amendment, which provides birthright citizenship, you might proceed from detaining legal residents to revoking the rights of naturalized citizens. Like other fascist regimes before you, you’ve been testing how much resistance you face in your effort to turn the United States into a fascist country. You start with the most marginalized, sending incarcerated trans women to men’s prisons, Venezuelans accused of gang affiliation to El Salvador, and detaining Arab and Muslim legal residents. But if the past is any indication, your next target might well be children of undocumented immigrants or naturalized citizens. Of course, as every student of fascism well knows, the ultimate goal is to apprehend all the supposed enemies of this administration, regardless of their legal status.Furthermore, I must confess to using academic concepts that have come under scrutiny as antisemitic by the Department of Justice taskforce for antisemitism. As a former member of the Israel Defense Forces, I have come a long way. It took me many years of soul-searching to realize that I was complicit in a settler-colonial occupation force and that my best recourse to make amends for that was to be outspoken about my country’s atrocities. As I tried to better understand the terrible tragedy of Zionism – a nationalist ideology that sought to free Jews from oppression only to end up as oppressors in Palestine – I confess to describing concepts such as apartheid, settler colonialism, ethno-nationalism and more. Perhaps even more disturbing from your perspective, I recently employed such concepts as genocide, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in a book I wrote about early American history.I also confess that in the past I have targeted white supremacist allies of this administration in my community of Chico, California. Clearly employing extralegal militias is part of this administration’s fascist playbook, as Trump already proved during the events of 6 January 2021. For instance, when my house was a target of antisemitic leafleting, I sought the help of a colleague and a local investigative journalist to make this very real form of antisemitism known to authorities. In the process the journalist uncovered troubling information that there is an armed white supremacist in our community who holds deep antisemitic convictions and now knows where I work. Had you really been interested in investigating antisemitism, you might have looked into the whereabouts of that individual. But since you want people like him around so that they can be activated when needed, and since all you really want is to cynically weaponize antisemitism, you might want to arrest me instead. After all, according to your standards, I – a Jew targeted by white supremacists – was all along the biggest threat to Jews in my own community.I have long heard stories about the rise of fascism in Europe from my grandparents, all of whom fled Europe and were refugees from antisemitism. The similarities between the actions of this administration and what my grandparents have lived through are unmistakable. I tell them here so that before you choose to arrest me, you will have one more opportunity to decide whether you will go down in history as aiding and abetting the rise of a fascist regime or as someone who refused to be part of another dark episode in this country’s history. Be forewarned: even if you yourself never directly suffer for your crimes, history will judge you.My dear grandfather, Otto, may his memory be a blessing, escaped Austria by the skin of his teeth when he was only 13 after the Nazi takeover of the country. Having witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht in November of 1938 – the night when local mobs violently rioted against Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses across much of Germany and Austria and arrested 30,000 citizens just for being Jewish – his parents made the decision to flee to Shanghai, the only port that would accept them. Clearly, our current president’s rhetoric regarding enemies of the American nation from within and without, against immigrants, trans people and people deemed un-American in their political commitments (like myself), are eerily reminiscent of the stories my grandfather told me about the scapegoating of Jews.As I consider the memory of dear grandmother Rachel, may her memory be a blessing, who grew up in Poland and survived the Holocaust, including enduring a harrowing year in Auschwitz and the death march to Germany, I cannot shake the sense of another parallel. As Hitler and the Nazi party were consolidating power, they appointed sycophants like yourself and so many others to positions of power in the Nazi administration. The most important criterion for Hitler was not that the people in positions of power were competent or even knowledgeable, but that they would be spineless and loyal to him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the historian Ian Kershaw, this type of leadership, where all bow to the great leader, led to the Holocaust, as the people surrounding Hitler constantly sought to outdo each other in their loyalty to the Führer. Knowing Hitler’s hatred for Jews, they constantly tried to curry favor by suggesting the most radical and far-reaching policy ideas towards Jews. This dynamic, which Kershaw called “working toward the Führer”, ultimately led Hitler and the people surrounding him to decide on the “Final Solution”, the plan to exterminate all the Jews in the world on an industrial scale in death camps. This idea of working toward the leader is upon us today, as we see institutions and even some in the Democratic party bowing before the great leader and his will. Instead of standing up to the administration at every turn, institutions, businesses and politicians across the country prefer to anticipate the administration’s wrath and eliminate any behavior or materials that might come under scrutiny. Meanwhile, Republicans rush to outdo each other in flattering the great leader, as American society seems frozen with fear in face of the rising tides of fascism.So, Kash Patel, do you want to arrest me and help bring about fascism?

      Eran Zelnik grew up in Israel and came to the US 15 years ago to complete his PhD in history. He now lives and teaches in Chico, California More

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      Judge gives Trump administration deadline to justify Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation

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      An immigration judge ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration has until 5pm on Wednesday to present evidence as to why Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate, should be deported. She said that if the evidence does not support deportation, she may rule on Friday on his release from immigration detention.Khalil, a green-card holder and leader in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last year, was detained on 8 March. The Trump administration claims that his presence has adverse foreign policy consequences, an argument decried by his legal team as a blatant free speech violation. The government has not provided any evidence that he broke the law, a typical condition for revoking permanent residency.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can “either can provide sufficient evidence or not”, said the judge, Jamee Comans, from her courtroom in Jena, Louisiana. “If he’s not removable, I’m going to terminate this case on Friday.”A lawyer for DHS told the judge: “We have evidence we will submit.”During the hearing, Khalil sat beside an empty chair, his immigration attorneys and counsel appearing over video on a flatscreen TV. Behind him sat a handful of supporters, some of whom had been directed by security to remove keffiyehs. Khalil, in navy blue detention-issued clothes, sat calmly, sometimes fingering a set of prayer beads.The proceedings were delayed as Comans tried to pick the attorneys out of the nearly 600 people – media, supporters and observers – attempting to join the video call.“This is highly unusual,” began Comans, in reference to the number of people attempting to watch the hearing.“Your honor, I’d appreciate it if you could let my wife in,” Khalil said softly into the microphone. A moment later, the face of Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, appeared on the screen.“Your honor, there is obviously a lot of public interest in this case, and we would appreciate if there could be online access” granted to the public, began Khalil’s immigration lawyer, Mark Van Der Hout. Comans denied this request and added, seeming frustrated, that she was “very, very close” to making the rest of the legal team appear in person as well.Van Der Hout said they had requested DHS’s evidence of the allegations more than two weeks ago and had not received a response. “We cannot plead until we know the specific allegations,” he added.The DHS also alleges that Khalil failed to disclose on his visa application that he had previously worked in a Syrian office of the British embassy and for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), before becoming a member of a pro-Palestinian activist group at Columbia.Van Der Hout requested to postpone a follow-up hearing Comans had set for Friday, noting: “We may have to depose the secretary of state” due to the nature of the charges against Khalil.Comans declined, telling him: “You’re in the wrong court for that.” Indicating she wanted to move the case along, she added: “I’m like you, Mr Van Der Hout: I’d like to see the evidence.”Apart from his immigration case, Khalil is challenging his detention in a separate case before a federal judge in New Jersey. More

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      To my husband, Mahmoud Khalil: I can’t wait to tell our son of his father’s bravery | Noor Abdalla

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      Exactly a month ago, you were taken from me. This is the longest we have been apart since we got married. I miss you more and more every day and as the days draw us closer to the arrival of our child, I am haunted by the uncertainty that looms over me – the possibility that you might not be there for this monumental moment. Every kick, every cramp, every small flutter I feel inside me serves as an inescapable reminder of the family we’ve dreamed of building together. Yet, I am left to navigate this profound journey alone, while you endure the cruel and unjust confines of a detention center.I could not be more proud of you, Mahmoud. You embody everything I ever hoped for in a partner and the father of my children. What more could I ask for as a role model for our children than a man who, with unwavering conviction, stands up for the liberation of his people, fully cognizant of the consequences of speaking truth to power? Your courage is boundless, and now more than ever, I am in awe of your strength and determination. Your voice, your belief in justice, and your refusal to be silenced are the very qualities that make you the man I love and admire.We will not forget those who have orchestrated this injustice, the government officials and university administrators who have targeted you without cause, without any shred of evidence to justify their actions. They sit in their ivory towers, scrambling to fabricate lies and distort the truth, throwing accusations like stones in the hope that something will stick. What they fail to realize is that their efforts are futile. Their wrongful detention of you is a testament to the fact that you have struck a nerve. You’ve disrupted the false narratives they’ve worked so hard to maintain, and spoken a truth that they are too terrified to acknowledge. What more do we have than our fundamental right to free speech, when they constantly attempt to strip us of our dignity, telling us we are unworthy of life, of respect, of voice? Now, they seek to punish that very speech, to silence the words that challenge their corrupt and oppressive systems.They are trying to silence you. They are trying to silence anyone who dares to speak out against the atrocities happening in Palestine. But they will fail. We will not be silenced. We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free. I eagerly await the day when I can tell our son the stories of his father’s bravery, of the courage that courses through his veins, and of the pride he should feel to carry Palestinian blood … your blood. And, more than anything, I pray that he will not have to grow up fighting the same fight for our basic freedoms.We will be reunited soon. Until then, I will continue to fight for you, for us and for our family. Your resilience and your courage will guide us through the storm. You are my best friend, my comrade, the very air that sustains me when it feels as though there is none left. I know your spirit is unwavering, that they cannot break you, and that you will emerge from this stronger than ever. I have no doubt that, when you are finally released, you will raise your hands in the air, chanting: “Free Palestine.”

      Dr Noor Abdalla is a dentist and a soon-to-be mother. She is the wife of Mahmoud Khalil More

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      ‘Detention Alley’: inside the Ice centres in the US south where foreign students and undocumented migrants languish

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      Behind the reinforced doors of courtroom number two, at a remote detention centre in central Louisiana, Lu Xianying sat alone before an immigration judge unable to communicate.Dressed in a blue jumpsuit that drooped from his slight frame, he waited as court staff called three different translation services, unable to find an interpreter proficient in his native Gan Chinese.Like almost all of the 17 detainees appearing before Judge Kandra Robbins during removal proceedings on Tuesday morning, Lu had no attorney because there is no right to legal representation in US immigration proceedings. He sat silently, evidently confused. A substitute interpreter was eventually found, and began translating the judge’s questions into Mandarin.“I am afraid to return to China,” he told the court, as he described how he had already filed an asylum application after crossing the border into Texas in March 2024. Lu said he was worried a lawyer had stolen his money and not submitted his asylum claim. Lu, who had only recently been detained, struggled to understand, as the judge asked him to list his country of return should he be deported.“Right now my order is to be removed?” He asked. “Or should I go to court?”The judge explained that he was present in court, and provided him another asylum application form. His next hearing was scheduled for April.The LaSalle immigration court, inside a sprawling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention centre in rural Jena, Louisiana, has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks after the former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was transferred here earlier this month. His case has drawn international attention as the Trump administration attempts to deport the pro-Palestinian activist under rarely used executive provisions of US immigration law. The government is fighting vigorously to keep Khalil’s case in Louisiana and he is due to appear again at the LaSalle court for removal proceedings on 8 April.View image in fullscreenBut it has also renewed focus on the network of remote immigration detention centres that stretch between Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, known as “Detention Alley” – where 14 of the country’s 20 largest detention centres are clustered. And now where other students have since been sent after being arrested thousands of miles away.Badar Khan Suri, a research student at Georgetown University, was arrested in Virginia last week and sent to a detention centre in Alexandria, Louisiana, and then on to another site, Prairieland in eastern Texas. This week, Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested in Massachusetts and sent to the South Louisiana Ice processing centre in the swamplands of Evangeline parish.These distant detention facilities and court systems have long been associated with rights violations, poor medical treatment and due process concerns, which advocates argue are only likely to intensify during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and promise to carry out mass deportations that has already led to a surge in the detention population. But rarely do cases within these centres attract much public attention or individual scrutiny.“Most of the folks in detention in Louisiana aren’t the ones making the news,” said Andrew Perry, an immigrant rights attorney at the ACLU of Louisiana. “But they are experiencing similar, if not the same, treatment as those who are.”To observe a snapshot of the more than 1,100 other detainees confined at the facility also holding Khalil, the Guardian travelled to Jena and witnessed a full day inside the LaSalle court, which is rarely visited by journalists. Dozens lined up for their short appearances before a judge and were sworn in en masse. Some expressed severe health concerns, others frustration over a lack of legal representation. Many had been transferred to the centre from states hundreds of miles away.Earlier in the morning Wilfredo Espinoza, a migrant from Honduras, appeared before Judge Robbins for a procedural update on his asylum case that was due for a full hearing in May. Espinoza, who coughed throughout his appearance and had a small bandage on his face, had no lawyer and informed the court he wished to abandon his asylum application “because of my health”. The circumstances of his detention and timing and location of his arrest by Ice were not made clear in court.He suffered from hypertension and fatty liver disease, he said through a Spanish translator. “I’ve had three issues with my heart here,” he said. “I don’t want to be here any more. I can’t be locked up for this long. I want to leave.”The judge asked him repeatedly if he was entering his decision of his own free will. “Yes,” he said. “I just want to leave here as quickly as possible.”The judge ordered his removal from the US.Substantiated allegations of medical neglect have plagued the Jena facility for years. In 2018, the civil rights division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) examined the circumstances of four fatalities at the facility, which is operated by the Geo Group, a private corrections company. All four deaths occurred between January 2016 and March 2017 and the DHS identified a pattern of delay in medical care, citing “failure of nursing staff to report abnormal vital signs”.At the South Louisiana Ice processing centre, an all-female facility that is also operated by the Geo Group and where Ozturk is now being held, the ACLU of Louisiana recently filed a complaint to the DHS’s civil rights division alleging an array of rights violations. These included inadequate access to medical care, with the complaint stating: “Guards left detained people suffering from severe conditions like external bleeding, tremors, and sprained limbs unattended to, refusing them access to diagnostic care”.The complaint was filed in December 2024, before the Trump administration moved to gut the DHS’s civil rights division earlier this month.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for the Geo Group said the company “strongly disagrees with the allegations that have been made regarding services we provide at Geo-contracted Ice processing centres” including the facility in Jena.“In all instances, our contracted services are monitored by the federal government to ensure strict compliance with applicable federal standards,” the spokesperson said, pointing to Ice’s performance-based national detention standards that the company’s contracts are governed by.The spokesperson added: “These allegations are part of a longstanding, politically motivated, and radical campaign to abolish Ice and end federal immigration detention by attacking the federal government’s immigration facility contracts.”The DHS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Louisiana experienced a surge in immigration detention during the first Trump administration. At the end of 2016, the state had capacity for a little more than 2,000 immigrant detainees, which more than doubled within two years. A wave of new Ice detention centres opened in remote, rural locations often at facilities previously used as private prisons. The state now holds the second largest number of detained immigrants, behind only Texas. Almost 7,000 people were held as of February 2025 at nine facilities in Louisiana, all operated by private companies.“It is this warehousing of immigrants in rural, isolated, ‘out of sight, of mind’ locations,” said Homero López, the legal director of Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy in Louisiana and a former appellate immigration judge. “It’s difficult on attorneys, on family members, on community support systems to even get to folks. And therefore it’s a lot easier on government to present their case. They can just bulldoze people through the process.”At the LaSalle court this week, the Guardian observed detainees transferred from states as far away as Arizona, Florida and Tennessee. In an afternoon hearing, where 15 detainees made an application for bond, which would release them from custody and transfer their case to a court closer to home, only two were granted.Cases heard from detention are far less likely to result in relief. At LaSalle, 78.6% of asylum cases are rejected, compared with the national average of 57.7%, according to the Trac immigration data project. In Judge Robbins’s court, 52% of asylum applicants appear without an attorney.In the afternoon session, the court heard from Fernando Altamarino, a Mexican national, who was transferred to Jena from Panama City, Florida, more than 500 miles away. Altamarino had no criminal record, like almost 50% of immigrants currently detained by Ice. He had been arrested by agents about a month ago, after he received a traffic ticket following a minor car accident.He tried to resolve the matter at his local courthouse, and was instead detained by immigration authorities. Via his lawyer, the court heard his application for release. A letter from a leader in his local church described his role as a stalwart member of the congregation and “a man who truly embodies faith”.But a prosecutor for the DHS, who opposed all but one bond application that afternoon, argued that Altamarino, who had lived in the country for more than a decade, presented a flight risk due to his “very limited to non-existent family ties to the US”.The judge concurred, as Altamarino sat upright and listened through a translator. Despite acknowledging he was “not a danger to community”, she sided with the government and denied bond.Altamarino thanked the judge as he left the room, under watch of a guard. The heavy door closed behind him as he headed back into the void of America’s vast detention system. More

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      Trump’s imperial plan is now eroding the rights of people who thought they were safe | Nesrine Malik

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      The imperial boomerang effect is the theory that techniques developed to repress colonised territories and peoples will, in time, inevitably be deployed at home. Repressive policing, methods of detention and controlling dissent, forcing humans to produce goods and services for overlords in the metropolis, or even mass enslavement and killing: all “boomerang” back into that metropolis. First, they are used against those who are seen as inferior; then, they are deployed even against those citizens with full rights and privileges if they dare to question authority. In short, the remote other eventually becomes the intimate familiar.Donald Trump’s second term has so far been a case study in how systems built for those whose rights have been diluted or taken away eventually devour those who were assumed to be safe from such violations. There are three ways in which this process of rebounding happens. The first is through the creation of a domestic caste system that mirrors the one outside a country’s borders, as demonstrated in the recent treatment of those foreigners with permanent US residency and valid work visas who expressed dissenting views on Gaza.Under Trump, their actions meet a threshold of insubordination that justifies their arrest, detention and deportation. The human rights of those individuals, such as due process, are cancelled. In allying themselves with Palestinians and against US foreign policy, they are demoted to the level of those Palestinians in their treatment by the US government. The tenuousness of permanent residency, valid work visas, green cards, marriage to US citizens and parenthood to American children starts to become clear. These are all conditional rights that can be stripped away if, in your alliances and solidarities, you identify yourself as a subject of American power. You mark yourself out as a citizen of the periphery daring to ask for the rights of the citizens of the core.Trump’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act is an almost too-on-the-nose demonstration of that two-tier system. Laws that were designed centuries ago, and have only been used to create legal vacuums on US soil in order to detain foreigners, create a second class of human. Franklin Roosevelt relied on the act to create domestic internment camps during the second world war, in which more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent were detained. Another order that he issued, and that mandated the internment of US citizens, was only overturned in 2018. If it had not been, Trump would no doubt be using the law to extend arrests and detentions to US citizens for their political opinions as well.That legal infrastructure, no matter how dormant, is always open to reactivation and capture. A similar process unfolds within the workings of an immigration complex that is already opaque and reflexively punitive. The second rebound mechanism is via this sort of infrastructure. The US immigration system is a vast enterprise of bureaucracy, employment, detention centres and private companies that channels and imprisons immigrants. It is also a system that, even before Trump, was one of legal sinkholes and almost infinite licence. Border guards have the final decision-making authority on whether you enter the US, no matter what visa you are issued from an embassy abroad; customs agents have the right to search devices; and, if you are detained and deported, that whole process can happen without you being given access to a lawyer or standing before a judge. Detention for many is a state of extended limbo.Combine a system so large with a regime that enables it while weakening the judicial and legal proceedings that act as a check on its worst impulses, and you have a recipe for overreach and impunity. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that gave even more power to border officials to “identify all resources that may be used to ensure that all aliens seeking admission to the United States, or who are already in the United States, are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible”. With increased deportations of undocumented migrants being a flagship policy of Trump’s campaign, and the empowerment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to achieve that end, a practical and political dragnet has been cast so wide that it’s catching a lot more than intended. It is no longer only those whose skin colour, paperwork or political opinions throw them into uncertainty.Over the past few weeks, German tourists were arrested when they tried to enter the US entirely legally through the southern border, and detained for weeks before being deported. Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian citizen with a work visa, was arrested and detained for two weeks but told to “mentally prepare” herself for “months”. A French scientist was denied entry to the US when his phone was searched and messages critical of Trump were found. Those who have been added to the immigration detention prison population, from Mooney to Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder and recent graduate of Columbia University, testify to the state of detainees they met there. “Justice,” Khalil wrote from detention, “escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.”Which brings us to the third way in which the boomerang effect takes place – through the erosion of norms and standards, a cannibalisation of the very political systems meant to govern and protect those at the centre. On 18 March, Trump called for the impeachment of a federal judge who issued a temporary ban on deportations as ordered by the administration. The confrontation between Trump and the judiciary has precipitated a constitutional crisis that is shaking the foundations of US politics. The system of checks and balances – the equality of the legislative, executive and judicial branches under the constitution – is threatened by Trump’s open defiance and desired subjugation of all to the executive office. This is against a backdrop of the limiting of academic freedom, the violation of the first amendment, and a disregard for the US constitution described by experts as a “blitzkrieg on the law”.In this, there is something that can be seen everywhere in regimes that either have or crave absolute power. In order to seize authority and run a whole country according to the interests of a sovereign, more and more parties must be disenfranchised and repressed. The imperial form of governance is the prototype of what is required to exert control in the presence of mass dissent. But all political systems with large components that subdue a significant portion of the population cannot continue without those components overtaking the entire machine. It is a simple, almost elegant fact; something like a law of nature. But a nation that withholds its best ideals from some will end up losing them for all.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More