Madeline Halpert
BBC News
Reporting fromIn court in New York City
In a Manhattan courtroom, lawyers for a Palestinian student activist argued Donald Trump’s administration was attempting to restrict access to their client in a far away jurisdiction, as hundreds gathered to protest on his behalf.
Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident and Columbia University graduate, was detained over the weekend for his participation in 2024 protests at the campus over the war in Gaza.
Mr Khalil’s legal team on Wednesday pushed to bring him back from a detention centre in Louisiana to New York, where he was arrested.
The judge did not issue a ruling at the hearing, but directed prosecutors to prove why the case should take place elsewhere.
President Donald Trump has said Mr Khalil’s arrest is the first of “many to come”, pledging to crack down on college protesters who he accuses of sympathising with Hamas.
Mr Khalil is a green card holder and is married to an American citizen. Earlier this week, Judge Jesse Furman blocked Trump’s attempt to deport him.
Absent from the hearing was Mr Khalil, who is being held in Jena, Louisiana, after officials moved him there from a New Jersey facility on Sunday, his lawyers said.
Attorneys for Mr Khalil told Judge Furman they had not been able to have any official calls with their client since his detainment and at times did not know where he was.
Judge Furman directed prosecutors to ensure the attorneys could speak on the phone with their client on Wednesday.
The judge will not issue a ruling on the jurisdiction of the case and where Mr Khalil will be held until both sides file additional motions this week, including prosecutors’ reasoning for wanting to move the case from New York. All sides said they agreed the case should move “as expeditiously as possible”, as Mr Khalil’s attorney requested.
Judge Furman also ruled to make documents in Mr Khalil’s case available to the public, citing the “significant public interest” in the case.
Mr Khalil’s detainment has sparked nationwide protests. Outside of court in Manhattan on Wednesday, demonstrators chanted and waved flags in support of Mr Khalil and Palestine. Among the protesters was actress Susan Sarandon, who told the BBC that Trump officials were trying to “disappear” Mr Khalil.
Mr Khalil’s lawyer Ramzi Kassem said outside court that his case should “outrage anybody in the United States who thinks speech should be free”.
US civil rights advocates, lawmakers and some Jewish groups have said that deporting Mr Khalil would violate American due process rights and is an attack on free speech.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in Ireland, told reporters Wednesday that the US could deport visa and green card holders for “virtually any reason”.
The Immigration and Nationality Act allows the State Department to deport noncitizens who are “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the US.
Legal experts say the case against Mr Khalil is unprecedented.
“Targeting individual protesters just for protesting … is highly unusual and something that we haven’t seen before, even under the first Trump administration,” said Jacob Hamburger, a visiting assistant professor at Cornell Law School.
Mr Khalil’s wife, who has not been named, detailed her husband’s arrest in a statement released by their lawyers on Tuesday. She said that the pair were confronted by immigration agents on Saturday when they returned to their apartment from a dinner.
She said the officials did not provide a warrant or a reason for arrest, and ended a call to the couple’s lawyers. They then handcuffed Mr Khalil and forced him into an unmarked car.
“Watching this play out in front of me was traumatizing: It felt like a scene from a movie I never signed up to watch,” she said.
Mr Khalil – who was born in Syria to Palestinian refugees – has been in immigration detention since his arrest, first in New Jersey and then Louisiana.
Prosecutors are arguing that Mr Khalil’s case should be moved from federal court in New York to Louisiana or New Jersey, where Mr Khalil has been held.
Mr Khalil’s lawyers oppose the move, saying he should be near his lawyers, his family and the place he was arrested.
“Instead of putting together our nursery and washing baby clothes in anticipation of our first child, I am left sitting in our apartment, wondering when Mahmoud will get a chance to call me from a detention center,” Mr Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, said.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said the arrest was part of its effort to fulfil Trump’s executive order that prohibits antisemitism.
It accused Mr Khalil of leading “activities aligned to Hamas” – the Islamist group based in Gaza that the US has designated a terrorist organisation – but provided no details.
The BBC has asked the agency for further information on the allegations.
Mr Khalil has long maintained that he simply acted as a spokesperson and mediator for the Columbia student protesters.
Critics have accused him of leading Columbia University Apartheid Divest (Cuad) – a student group that demanded the school divest from Israel and called for a ceasefire in Gaza – which the Palestinian activist has denied.
Columbia was just one college campus that played host to mass student protests after the war erupted in Gaza. Some are now concerned that the Trump administration is attempting to silence potential detractors by targeting protesters who are not US citizens.
But critics of Mr Khalil and some students protesting over the war in Gaza have in recent weeks reportedly advocated for the deportation of Mr Khalil and other protesters.
Trump appeared to respond to these calls when he posted on social media on Monday about Mr Khalil’s detainment.
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it… We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country – never to return again,” the president wrote.
