The federal government and a Columbia University student threatened with deportation for his role in campus protests against Israel have been sparring in court over the Trump administration’s move to ship him halfway across the country to an immigration lockup in Louisiana.
The government says he could not be detained at an immigration facility near where he was originally arrested in part because of a bedbug infestation, so they sent him to Louisiana. The student, Mahmoud Khalil, says there was no such discussion of bedbugs and he feared he was being immediately deported.
Khalil said in a declaration filed in Manhattan federal court Monday that while he was held overnight at a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, “I did not hear anyone mention bedbugs.”
In court papers over the weekend, lawyers for the Justice Department also blamed his move on overcrowded facilities in the Northeast.
Khalil made the statement about bedbugs in an exhibit attached to court papers in which his lawyers asked that he be freed on bail while the courts decide whether his arrest violated the First Amendment.
The lawyers have also asked a judge to widen the effect of any order to stop the U.S. government from “arresting, detaining, and removing noncitizens who engage in constitutionally protected expressive activity in the United States in support of Palestinian rights or critical of Israel.”
In his declaration, Khalil said he was put in a van when he was taken away from the Elizabeth facility and he asked if he was being returned to FBI headquarters in Manhattan, where he was taken immediately after his arrest.
“I was told, ‘no, we are going to JFK Airport.’ I was afraid they were trying to deport me,” he recalled.
Of his time spent at the Elizabeth facility, he wrote: “I was in a waiting room with about ten other people. We slept on the ground. Even though it was cold inside the room, there were no beds, mattresses, or blankets.”
In the weekend court papers, lawyers for the Justice Department gave a detailed description of Khalil’s March 8 arrest and his transport from Manhattan to Elizabeth and then to Kennedy International Airport in New York the next day for his transfer to Louisiana, where he has been held since.
“Khalil could not be housed at Elizabeth Detention Facility long-term due to a bedbug issue, so he remained there until his flight to Louisiana,” the lawyers wrote. They said he was at the facility from 2:20 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. on March 9.
The lawyers have asked that legal issues be addressed by federal judges in New Jersey or Louisiana rather than New York. A Manhattan federal judge has not yet ruled on the request.
Khalil’s lawyers, who oppose transferring the case, wrote in a submission Monday that the transfer to Louisiana was “predetermined and carried out for improper motives” rather than because of a bedbug infestation.
Despite the bedbug claim, the Elizabeth Detention accepted at least four individuals for detention from March 6 through last Thursday and Khalil himself saw men being processed for detention while he was there, they wrote.