Trump Admin Wins Appeal Over Pro-Palestinian Activist Khalil’s Release
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a lower court judge lacked the authority to order the release of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil from immigration custody, handing a win to President Donald Trump’s administration as it pursues his deportation.
In a 2–1 decision, a panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the lawsuit Khalil filed challenging his detention should be dismissed, a ruling that leaves him vulnerable to being taken back into custody.
The majority opinion was written by U.S. Circuit Judges Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, both appointed by Republican presidents. They concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act requires Khalil’s arguments to be raised through the standard immigration process, specifically by appealing a final removal order issued by an immigration judge.
“The scheme Congress enacted governing immigration proceedings provides Khalil a meaningful forum in which to raise his claims later on — in a petition for review of a final order of removal,” the judges wrote in an unsigned opinion.
Khalil, who emerged as a leading figure in pro-Palestinian demonstrations opposing Israel’s war in Gaza, was taken into custody on March 8 when immigration agents arrested him in the lobby of his university residence in Manhattan.
President Donald Trump has described the campus protests as antisemitic and has pledged to remove foreign students who participated in them. Khalil was the first individual targeted under that policy.
Although Khalil was initially held in New York, immigration authorities transferred him to New Jersey before his attorney filed a lawsuit contesting his detention, resulting in the case being reassigned to a judge there.
In June, Khalil was released from a Louisiana immigration detention facility after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, ordered the Department of Homeland Security to free him from custody.
{Matzav.com}
