A case challenging the Trump administration’s effort to deport a student activist will not be moved to a more conservative Louisiana court
Mahmoud Khalil hearing: See video of activity outside
Scenes outside the hearing of detained Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil at U.S. District Court in Newark on Friday, March 28, 2025.
- A federal judge ruled that a Columbia University graduate’s case against the government will be heard in New Jersey, not Louisiana.
- Mahmoud Khalil is suing the government, alleging his constitutional rights were violated when he was detained and threatened with deportation.
- The government argues Khalil should be deported for working with UNRWA and for his involvement in pro-Palestinian protests.
In a blow to the Trump administration, a judge ruled Tuesday that a Columbia University graduate should continue to face a federal court in New Jersey.
Mahmoud Khalil, who was involved in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, is suing the federal government, arguing it violated his constitutional rights, including free speech and due process, when he was detained and threatened with deportation.
The Trump Administration requested to transfer the case from the District of New Jersey to the Western District of Louisiana, where Khalil is currently held in immigration detention and where appeals would be heard in one of the nation’s most conservative courts.
But the New Jersey court has jurisdiction because Khalil was in the state when his petition was filed, Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled.
“With this ruling, the Court has rightfully reaffirmed that Mahmoud Khalil’s case belongs in New Jersey ‒ significantly closer to his wife, community and legal counsel,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “The Trump administration has attempted to manipulate the judiciary to suppress speech that supports Palestinian rights. 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.”
Khalil’s legal team had argued that if the court allowed the transfer, it would reward the Trump administration’s “attempts to shop for favorable jurisdictions” by moving detainees across state lines.
The case against Khalil
Khalil was detained in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on what he has called antisemitic and anti-American campus protests. Khalil, a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Syria, was a spokesperson and negotiator last year for pro-Palestinian demonstrators against war in Gaza at Columbia University in Manhattan.
He was arrested in the lobby of his student apartment building in New York City on March 8 after returning from iftar, the fast-breaking meal during Ramadan, with his wife, a U.S. citizen who is due to give birth this month. Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told him his green card was being revoked.
Khalil was held at the Elizabeth Detention Facility in New Jersey for several hours before being transferred to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Facility.
The Department of Homeland security charged Khalil under a rarely-used provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that the Secretary of State can move to deport any noncitizen whose presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
The U.S. government also has alleged Khalil withheld information on his application that he worked for UNRWA, a UN relief agency.
In a statement, his legal team called the allegations “completely meritless.” They say his internship for UNRWA was approved by Columbia for credit and listed on his application. An allegation that he worked beyond 2022 at the British Embassy in Beirut was also “inaccurate” and “irrelevant,” the statement said.
Khalil’s wife speaks out
In a statement, Khalil’s wife said she was relieved at the court’s decision today to keep her husband’s case in New Jersey.
“ICE agents ripped him from our home and took him across state lines to Louisiana, violating his rights and holding him as a political prisoner,” she said. “He is being illegally held by the Trump administration, over a thousand miles away, simply because he advocated against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
Other students detained over pro-Palestinian speech also deserve freedom, Abdallah said.
The administration has targeted other scholars for deportation over pro-Palestinian speech that it equates with support for Hamas or terrorism.
They include a Korean-American student at Columbia who participated in protests; a Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow who supported Palestinians in social media posts; and a Tufts University doctoral student who co-authored a piece published in The Tufts Daily, the school’s student newspaper, in favor of divestment from Israeli corporations.
“As the countdown to our son’s birth begins and I inch closer and closer to my due date,” Abdallah said, “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.”