A U.S. immigration choose dominated Friday that the Trump administration can transfer ahead with its deportation case in opposition to Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate pupil and Palestinian activist arrested in New York final month.
Judge Jamee Comans of the LaSalle Immigration Court in Louisiana stated she lacked the authority to overrule a choice regarding Khalil that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made final month below a 1952 legislation known as the Immigration and Nationality Act. Rubio decided that Khalil must be eliminated as a result of his presence within the United States has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
The choose’s resolution isn’t the ultimate say over whether or not Khalil shall be deported. In a separate case in New Jersey federal courtroom, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz has blocked deportation whereas he considers Khalil’s declare that his March 8 arrest was made in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections for freedom of speech.
Khalil, a distinguished determine within the pro-Palestinian pupil protest motion that has roiled Columbia’s New York City campus, was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, holds Algerian citizenship and have become a U.S. lawful everlasting resident final yr. Khalil’s spouse is a U.S. citizen.
His case is a high-profile take a look at of the Republican president’s efforts to deport overseas pro-Palestinian college students who’re within the United States legally and, like Khalil, haven’t been charged with any crime.
The administration has stated Khalil and different worldwide college students who participate in pro-Palestinian protests are harming U.S. overseas coverage pursuits, citing a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that offers the secretary of state broad authority to find out when a overseas nationwide could also be deported.
Comans stated Congress, in that legislation, gave the secretary of state “unilateral judgment” to make such a willpower.
The choose’s resolution got here after a 90-minute listening to held in a courtroom situated inside a jail complicated for immigrants surrounded by double-fenced razor wire run by non-public authorities contractors in rural Louisiana. Khalil, 30, has known as himself a political prisoner. He was arrested at his Columbia University condo constructing and transferred to a Louisiana jail.
His attorneys have stated the Trump administration was concentrating on him for speech protected by the First Amendment, together with the suitable to criticize American overseas coverage.
“Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent,” his lawyer Marc Van Der Hout stated in an announcement after the listening to. “This is not over, and our fight continues.”
The American immigration courtroom system is run and its judges are appointed by the U.S. Justice Department, separate from the federal government’s judicial department.
The Trump administration submitted a two-page letter from Rubio as proof that Khalil must be deported. Rubio wrote that Khalil must be eliminated for his position in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”
Rubio’s letter didn’t accuse Khalil of breaking any legal guidelines, however stated that the State Department can revoke the authorized standing of immigrants even when their beliefs, associations or statements are “otherwise lawful.”
Khalil has stated criticism of the U.S. authorities’s assist of Israel’s army occupation of Palestinian territories is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism.
A State Department spokesperson stated the division doesn’t touch upon ongoing authorized instances.
In the case earlier than Farbiarz, Khalil is difficult what he has stated is his illegal arrest, detention and switch to the jail Louisiana, some 1,200 miles (1,930 km) from his household and attorneys in New York City.
Source: www.dailysabah.com