“Although today’s ruling is just the first step in a long legal process, it should be alarming to all Americans who cherish the Bill of Rights and basic freedoms like free speech,” said Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, in a statement.
“We are confident that federal courts will see through the Trump administration’s lawless attack on free speech and that the movement against the Israeli government’s genocide will continue to grow in our nation, despite these Orwellian attempts to suppress free speech.”
Court allows US admin to deport pro-Palestine Mahmoud Khalil
[GEO.TV] An immigration judge ruled Friday that a pro-Paleostinian student protester, a US permanent resident detained by the Trump administration, can be deported, US media and a legal rights group said.
Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans said the government had met its burden to prove it had grounds to deport him, Fox News reported.
"An immigration judge ruled immediately after a hearing today that Mahmoud Khalil is removable under US immigration law," the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.
Comans had ordered the government to spell out its case against Khalil, who the government is seeking to deport on the grounds that his protest activities are a threat to national security.
In a letter to the court, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...insisted that Khalil's activism could hurt Washington's foreign policy.
| The Times of Israel adds: |
Khalil’s lawyers, including representation from the American Civil Liberties Union, have challenged the legality of his detention, saying the Trump administration is trying to crack down on free speech protected by the US Constitution.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, has cited the Immigration and Nationality Act, passed in 1952, which gave the executive branch power to deport any noncitizen who poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
The law also specifically allows for the deportation of a non-citizen who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.”
On Friday, Justice Department attorneys said in papers filed in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, that Comans would not have the authority to immediately free Khalil.
They said an immigration judge could determine if Khalil is subject to deportation and then conduct a bail hearing afterward if it is found that he is not.
Khalil isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The government, however, has said that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country for expressing views that the administration considers to be antisemitic and pro-Hamas.
Khalil, a 30-year-old international affairs graduate student, had served as a negotiator and spokesperson for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a student coalition that spearheaded anti-Israel protests at the school.
CUAD has praised “violent resistance” by Palestinians, including, explicitly, the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages. The group also hosted a number of pro-Hamas figures to campus, including Khaled Barakat, who was later listed by the Biden administration as a specially designated foreign terrorist.
In addition, Khalil served as a negotiator and spokesperson for the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia last year, and for students who broke into and occupied a university building, unfurling a banner calling for “intifada.” He is not personally accused of participating in the building occupation, however, and wasn’t among the people arrested in connection with the demonstrations.
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