Mahmoud Khalil, 30, a legal U.S. resident, was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8. He was held overnight at an immigration detention center in New Jersey before being moved to an immigration facility in Jena, Louisiana.
Judge Jesse Furman, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, called the legal challenge an “exceptional case” in need of careful legal review to determine whether the government “violated the law or exercised its otherwise lawful authority in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cited as grounds for Khalil’s deportation a rarely-used statute giving him sweeping power to deport those who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
The White House has accused Khalil of “siding with terrorists,” and President Trump has described Khalil’s case as the “first of many to come.”
Khalil is from Syria and now holds a green card. He is an international affairs graduate student who has been a key leader in the anti-Israel protests at Columbia, some of which have turned violent and have threatened Jewish students on the campus.
