Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s court case to stay in New Jersey

The case against Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil will be heard in New Jersey after a judge denied a government motion to transfer it to Louisiana, where the Columbia graduate student has been detained in federal custody for the last month.

US District judge Michael Farbiarz concluded that the New Jersey district court has jurisdiction over the case because Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, was in the state when his attorneys filed a habeas corpus motion seeking to challenge the legality of his detention, according to a 67-page decision filed on Wednesday. The judge clarified in his verdict that the motion, “though filed in New York, must be treated as having been filed in New Jersey”.

Khalil’s legal team argued that if the court allowed this case to play out in Louisiana, it would reward the Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to suppress dissent and manipulate federal court jurisdiction by transferring Khalil across state lines in the middle of the night. 

Speaking about the decision, Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, who is nine months pregnant with their first child, said she was “relieved” at the court’s decision to keep her husband’s ongoing case in New Jersey.

“As the countdown to our son’s birth begins and I inch closer and closer to my due date, I will continue to strongly advocate for Mahmoud’s freedom and for his safe return home so he can be by my side to welcome our first child,” she said.

“This is an important step towards securing Mahmoud’s freedom, but there is still a lot more to be done,” she said.  

Preliminary injunction

The next step for Khalil’s legal team is to get him out of detention by requesting the court grant a preliminary injunction, which would release him from custody immediately.

If granted, it would also block Trump’s policy of arresting and detaining non-citizens who have engaged in First Amendment-protected activity in support of Palestinian rights. The team is arguing that the Trump administration’s invocation of a vague, rarely used provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act – the “foreign policy ground” – is retaliation for speech like Khalil’s, which is protected by the First Amendment.  

This is the second time the Trump administration has unsuccessfully sought to transfer the case to Louisiana, following the 19 March ruling from judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York that the case should be heard in New Jersey. 

Donna Lieberman, executive director at the New York Civil Liberties Union, one of eight organisations representing him, said: “While the trauma ICE has inflicted on Mr Khalil and his nine-months pregnant wife, Dr Noor Abdalla, is irreparable, this is a step towards bringing him home.”

Brett Max Kaufman, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, said he hoped the court’s definitive ruling would set a precedent.

“We hope the court’s definitive ruling sends a strong message to other courts around the country facing government attempts to shop for favorable jurisdictions by moving people detained on unconstitutional immigration charges around and making it difficult or impossible for their lawyers to know where to seek their immediate release.” 

Habeas corpus

Khalil was a negotiator for pro-Palestinian student protesters in talks with Columbia University’s administration during last spring’s Gaza solidarity encampment on campus opposing Israel’s war on Gaza.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents arrested him outside of his apartment on Columbia University’s campus on 8 March as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian students, as the administration equates their activism with antisemitism.

The plain clothes agents stated they had revoked Khalil’s student visa. When his wife showed the agents that Mahmoud has a green card, not a visa, they said that it was revoked as well. Khalil was transferred to an immigration detention centre in central Louisiana without notice from his counsel or his wife, despite the fact that his habeas case was pending in New York. 

The Center for Constitutional Rights and co-counsel, the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project at Cuny School of Law, filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order mandating Khalil’s return to New York to proceed with his pending habeas case on 10 March. The habeas petition challenges his arrest and detention as violations of the First and Fifth Amendments. 

Khalil’s arrest comes during a crackdown on student organisers active in Palestine solidarity protests, with several attempts to deport those who are on student visas. It also comes in the wake of several universities cracking down on student organising against Israel’s war in Gaza, including a previous attempt to suspend Khalil for his activism.

Khalil is one of several people affiliated with prestigious universities who have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as part of the government’s immigration crackdown.

Lawyers for the US government said that Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk – who was taken into detention by masked federal immigration agents on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, on 25 March – was moved to Vermont by the time a federal judge ordered authorities to keep her in Massachusetts.

Justice Department lawyers said there was no available space to detain her in New England, and she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an ICE detention centre in remote Basile, Louisiana. Her legal counsel said she did not know why she had been detained until more than 24 hours after she was taken into custody.

US District judge Denise Casper in Boston scheduled a Thursday hearing on the matter.

Casper, responding to a petition filed last week by Ozturk’s lawyers, issued a ruling on 28 March that Ozturk can’t be removed from the United States “until further order of this court”.

Ozturk is a Turkish national on an F-1 student visa who has been accused of “supporting” Hamas. No evidence has been provided for the claim.