Closely watched deportation case of activist to go before judge in Newark

by Sophie Nieto-Munoz, New Jersey Monitor

Lawyers for a man who is facing deportation after leading pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia University’s campus are set to appear in Newark Friday morning before a federal judge who may decide whether the man’s case should be transferred to Louisiana.

Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest by immigration agents earlier this month and his potential deportation drew swift backlash from student groups, immigration activists, and civil rights attorneys who noted that he is a lawful permanent resident. Khalil was targeted by removal from the United States because of his advocacy against the war in Gaza, they say.

Federal officials, meanwhile, allege Khalil has connections to terrorist organizations and lied on his application for a green card, claims Khalil’s legal team have denied.

Friday’s hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.

Khalil’s petition to be released was initially heard by a federal judge in Manhattan who moved the case to New Jersey last week, saying Khalil undoubtedly made that petition when he was being detained in Elizabeth (he was later moved to a Louisiana detention center, where he remains). Trump administration attorneys told the New York judge the case should be heard in the western district of Louisiana, an argument they are making again to the judge overseeing the case in New Jersey.

When Joe Biden was president, conservative groups routinely filed lawsuits targeting his administration in the western district of Louisiana as a way of virtually guaranteeing they would be heard by a conservative judge, according to Bloomberg Law. Appeals from that district are heard by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, perhaps the most conservative federal appeals court in the nation.

Khalil’s attorneys say public confidence in the judiciary would be undermined if judges allowed the case to devolve into a “perpetual game of jurisdictional ping-pong” until one side surrenders.

“That rationale applies with even more force in a case like this, involving an unprecedented exercise of executive power that, for two weeks, a detained Petitioner has been challenging as blatantly unconstitutional,” they wrote in a brief filed Monday, one of a flurry of filings both sides have made in the case since it was transferred to New Jersey last week.

Trump administration lawyers are not conceding that Khalil has the power to seek his release (known as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus). But they say the court that should decide that dispute is not New Jersey federal court, but the one in western Louisiana.

“This Court has never had habeas jurisdiction over this matter, because no proper petition has ever been filed in this Court. And it does not have habeas jurisdiction over this matter now, because it neither has jurisdiction over the proper respondent in this action, nor is this district the district of confinement,” they wrote in a brief filed last week.

On March 8, while returning home from dinner with his pregnant wife, Khalil was arrested by plainclothes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in New York. Khalil, a Syrian native, was detained and transferred from New York to New Jersey to Texas to Louisiana. He has not been charged with any crime.