Attorneys for Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil and the Trump administration clashed in court over Khalil’s renewed request to be released on bail or, at least, transferred to a detention center in New Jersey to be closer to family.
Both parties submitted new filings after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz declined to release Khalil last week. While Farbiarz had blocked Khalil’s detention and deportation based on allegations that his presence in the country threatened U.S. foreign policy, the administration argued that it would continue to detain Khalil, alleging he lied on his permanent residency application.
Farbiarz previously said it was "overwhelmingly likely" that Khalil wouldn’t be detained solely over allegations related to his residency application. However, he ultimately sided with the government, finding that Khalil's legal team hadn’t successfully argued why detention on those grounds would be unlawful.
Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and former Columbia University student, was arrested in March by immigration agents and has been held since then at a facility in rural Jena, Louisiana. He played an active role in the protests over the war in Gaza on the New York City campus last year, negotiating between the student protesters and the university administration.
His attorneys urged the court this week to immediately release him from the Louisiana detention center on bail, adding that the administration’s efforts to keep him detained based on allegations of omissions in an immigration application were "rare and extremely unusual."
The allegations, which were brought after Khalil’s arrest, included claims that he failed to disclose continued employment at the British Embassy in Beirut and a previous role as an officer at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in New York.
NBC News found that the administration had relied on unverified tabloid articles and made erroneous claims about Khalil's work history and affiliations in a review of over 100 pages of evidence submitted by the government.
Khalil has no criminal record and hasn’t been charged with a crime.
In court filings, Khalil's lawyers said his custody "amounts to further unconstitutional retaliation and adds to the extraordinary circumstances warranting relief."
"Like it has for the past three months, the government is using all of the tools available to it to hinder justice for Mahmoud," said Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. "The government practically never holds people in detention on a charge like this, and it’s clear that the government is doing anything they can to punish Mahmoud for his speech about Palestine."
Khalil’s attorneys asked that if he isn’t released, he should be transferred to a detention center in New Jersey, pointing to a policy that requires noncitizen parents or legal guardians who are primary caretakers or have custody of minor children to be placed in facilities close to their children.
According to emails reviewed by NBC News, Khalil’s legal team asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement to transfer him to New Jersey this month so he could be closer to his newborn son. However, the New Orleans ICE field office said Khalil didn’t meet the policy’s criteria and denied the request without explanation.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration pushed back in court filings, arguing that allegations about his green card application "independently" justified Khalil’s detention.
In court documents, the Justice Department said the federal judge "should not order Khalil’s outright release, because doing so would impede the Government’s discretionary decision to detain him on lawful independent grounds. Congress barred judicial intervention over those decisions."
The Trump administration said the Department of Homeland Security, not the courts, also has the authority to determine where people in deportation proceedings are held.
In response to Khalil's attorneys’ citing agency policy for his transfer, the Trump administration said, "They are policies or guidelines, not regulations."
Justice Department lawyers said that the detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, is over capacity and that ordering a transfer "would undoubtedly affect the facility’s continued efforts to fall back within operational norms."
The Justice Department declined to comment, and ICE and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
