Politics
BREAKING: Trump Administration Victorious In Crucial Legal Battle
On Friday, a federal judge ruled that Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist from Columbia University will stay in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the federal government amended its legal strategy.
The Trump administration made the case that it could keep Khalil, who holds a green card, due to leaving work off his application for permanent residency. It’s a change that comes after District Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled on Wednesday that the government couldn’t keep Khalil because of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s labeling him a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
“Khalil is now detained based on that other charge of removability,” the government stated on Friday. “Detaining Khalil based on that other ground of removal is lawful.”
The ruling isn’t much of a shock, as Farbiarz said that the administration could appeal the decision or find other justifications to keep Khalil detained.
“To be sure, it might be argued that the Petitioner would be detained anyway. After all, as noted above, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to remove the Petitioner based not only on the Secretary of State’s determination — but also on a second basis, the Petitioner’s alleged failure to accurately complete his lawful-permanent-resident application,” he stated at the time.
According to NewsNation, the government waited until the very last moment to present their case, after Farbiarz stated that Khalil would be released at 9:30 a.m. Friday morning.
“That time came and went, and Khalil was not released, with his lawyers submitting a filing asking the judge to explicitly order his release. The judge gave the Trump administration until 1:30 p.m. to respond. Khalil, the lead negotiator for Columbia’s pro-Palestinian encampment last spring, was arrested on March 8, becoming the first known activist to come under the wrath of the Trump’s administration’s foreign student crackdown,” the article read.
Khalil has been held in detention for a total of three months and has missed the birth of his first child.
“The most immediate and visceral harms I have experienced directly relate to the birth of my son, Deen. Instead of holding my wife’s hand in the delivery room, I was crouched on a detention center floor, whispering through a crackling phone line as she labored alone,” he stated in court documents from last week. “I listened to her pain, trying to comfort her while 70 men slept around me.”
Several pro-Palestinian activists have been released from detention while they await their immigration hearings to play out in court.
