A Louisiana immigration judge ruled Friday that Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil is eligible for deportation after the Trump administration accused the legal permanent resident of being a threat to U.S. foreign policy for his involvement in pro-Palestinian activism.
Judge Jamee Comans issued her ruling after an almost two-hour hearing at the LaSalle Immigration Court in Jena, Louisiana, where Khalil, 30, has been detained since he was arrested at his New York apartment last month and stripped of his green-card status.
She set a deadline of April 23 for Khalil’s legal team to apply for a waiver to delay or prevent the administration from removing him, his attorneys said. If they fail to do so, the judge said, he could be deported to Syria, where he was born, or Algeria, where he is a citizen.
Khalil’s attorneys said they would appeal if Comans ordered him deported, and they are pursuing other legal avenues that could keep him in the United States.
Immigration judges fall under the supervision of the Justice Department and are separate from the federal court system. Khalil has filed a federal lawsuit in New Jersey challenging his arrest as unconstitutional, and his legal team said a victory in that case could block his deportation.
U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz, who is overseeing the federal court proceedings, held a brief videoconference with Khalil’s representatives and Justice Department lawyers to receive an update after Comans’s ruling.
“An immigration court determined our client Mahmoud Khalil to be removable from the U.S. based solely on his political speech,” the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing him, wrote on social media. “The fight isn’t over — we’ll keep fighting for Mahmoud’s freedom and all of our First Amendment rights in federal court.”
The ruling in Louisiana marked a milestone victory for the Trump administration, which has targeted international university students and faculty for detention and deportation despite their legal immigration status in the United States. Some have been involved in campus activism, and others are accused of unlawful activities.
The federal government’s attempts to remove them have ignited fierce blowback from immigrant rights groups and civil liberties advocates who say the Trump administration is trampling on free-speech rights in service of the president’s deportation agenda.
In some cases, the scholars have been stripped of their legal status because of campus activism or relatively minor legal infractions that were dropped without convictions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month that the administration had revoked about 300 visas.
Figures released Thursday by a nonprofit education group indicate that the total figure is probably higher. The data collected by NAFSA: Association of International Educators indicates that almost 1,000 students and scholars have had their visas revoked and/or their records terminated in an ICE database, thus putting their legal status in the country in jeopardy.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said, “The Trump Administration is committed to the enforcement of our immigration laws and will take swift action to remove aliens who pose serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
Celebrating the outcome of Friday’s court hearing, the White House posted a Fox News headline on X, with a photo of Khalil and a separate one of President Donald Trump waving. (The Trump photo was taken during a campaign event last year as he leaned out of a McDonald’s drive-through window.)
According to his legal team, Khalil addressed Comans in court, saying: “I would like to quote what you said last time — that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness. Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process.”
Federal authorities had accused Khalil of fomenting antisemitic protests and supporting Hamas, a designated terrorist group. Khalil’s attorneys argued that he is a peaceful protester who was advocating for the Palestinian people.
In a two-page State Department memo, submitted to the court this week, Rubio said Khalil and another student, whose name was redacted, helped foster “a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”
Rubio wrote that their continued presence in the country would “undermine U.S. policy to combat antisemitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence.”
Khalil’s legal team vigorously rejected the government’s accusations. They said the Trump administration is targeting their client and other student activists over political views.
During the immigration court hearing, Khalil’s attorneys asked Comans for more time to gather evidence and for copies of Department of Homeland Security documents that Rubio had mentioned in his memo.
The judge denied the requests, saying immigration courts do not have the authority to develop the legal record beyond what is presented during the hearing, said Marc Van Der Hout, one of Khalil’s attorneys.
Comans held in abeyance a second government charge against Khalil that alleged he committed immigration fraud on his green-card application, which his lawyers have denied.
Some Democratic lawmakers and free-speech groups condemned the outcome.
“We cannot allow the Trump Administration to end our constitutional rights,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), who is Palestinian American, said in a statement after Comans’s ruling. “The right to free speech obviously includes the right to protest the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians. This fascism won’t end with Mahmoud Khalil. It’s a threat to all of us.”
Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said in a statement that the “only ‘crime’ the government has offered was that Mahmoud Khalil expressed a disfavored political opinion. If that’s a crime in America, every single one of us is guilty.”
Khalil was arrested March 8 by federal agents in plain clothes as he and his wife, a U.S. citizen who is nine months pregnant with their first child, returned to their university apartment after visiting a friend. In court filings, Khalil’s attorneys said the men described themselves as Department of Homeland Security agents and said they were revoking his student visa.
Khalil and his wife countered that he had a green card, which grants legal permanent residency in the United States, and showed them his papers.
Khalil’s lawyers have objected to his detainment in Louisiana, more than 1,300 miles from his home in New York. They filed a federal lawsuit in New York calling his detention unconstitutional, and a judge ruled that the legal challenge could move forward in New Jersey, where Khalil was briefly detained before being sent to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena.
After Khalil’s arrest, Trump said in a social media post that it was the “first arrest of many” for those “who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.” He called Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student.”
Khalil’s supporters described him as a diplomatic, hardworking student. He was chosen as a negotiator between protesters and Columbia University’s administration as intense demonstrations were roiling campus last spring. He often spoke with reporters at protests, unmasked and using his full name, unlike many participants who sought to hide their identities.
Khalil told The Washington Post earlier this year that he was not affiliated with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a protest group that led many pro-Palestinian actions on campus. CUAD has at times used language supportive of Hamas.
Khalil was born and raised in a refugee camp in Syria and went to college in Lebanon. He and his wife moved to the United States in 2023 to begin his graduate studies at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. That fall, protests over the Israel-Gaza war erupted on campus.
Khalil got his green card in November 2024.
In January, Trump said he would find and deport foreign students who joined in what he called “pro-jihadist” demonstrations.
“It sets a dangerous precedent,” Khalil told The Post at the time, “where peaceful protest is met with severe consequences, eroding democratic principles and academic freedom.”
