NEW YORK — A federal judge said the Trump administration’s effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil because of his pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University was likely unconstitutional.
But in a lengthy order issued Wednesday, Judge Michael Farbiarz declined to release Khalil from a Louisiana jail, finding his attorneys had not sufficiently responded to another charge brought by the government: that Khalil did not properly disclose certain personal details in his permanent residency application.
The judge said he would outline next steps in the coming days.
Khalil, a legal U.S. resident, was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8 in the lobby of his university-owned apartment, the first arrest under President Donald Trump’s widening crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
He was then flown across the country and taken to an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana, thousands of miles from his attorneys and wife, a U.S. citizen who gave birth to their first child while he was in custody.
Khalil’s lawyers argue his detention is illegal and part of a broader attempt by the Trump administration to suppress constitutionally protected free speech.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked a rarely used statute to justify deporting Khalil and others, citing “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
In his order Wednesday, the judge said Rubio’s order opened the door to “arbitrary enforcement” and would likely be found unconstitutional.
Inquiries to the State Department were not immediately returned.