Ex-Columbia Student Wins Ruling Blocking Deportation, for Now

A federal judge said the US can’t immediately deport Mahmoud Khalil, blocking the Trump administration’s attempts to get another court to give it permission to ship the former Columbia University graduate student out of the country.

The ruling Thursday by US District Judge Michael Farbiarz said the immigration court didn’t have the authority to deport Khalil while a June 11 order by Farbiarz blocking such a move was still in place. The ruling, however, directs the immigration court to take another look at the issue under new guidance from Farbiarz.

Khalil, who was born in Syria and is Palestinian, has become a symbol of the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus protests over the war between Israel and Hamas. The 30-year-old spent 104 days at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana before Farbiarz ordered his release last month.

Farbiarz said in a June 11 ruling that Khalil couldn’t be detained or deported based on the Trump administration’s claims that his participation in the protests compromised US foreign policy. But after Khalil was released, Farbiarz said that an immigration court ordered his deportation on June 20.

Farbiarz vacated the immigration court’s deportation order, saying that judge failed to “fairly” consider that Khalil’s wife and child are both US citizens. Instead, Farbiarz said the immigration court relied solely on a determination by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a reason to remove Khalil from the country.

“The ruling makes clear that the administration must actually follow the law and Constitution,” Baher Azmy, a lawyer for Khalil at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in an email. The so-called “adverse foreign policy charge is patently unconstitutional and the administration cannot attempt to remove him on that ground, plain and simple,” Azmy said.

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Farbiarz said waivers against deportation are “typically granted” to immigrants whose relatives are US citizens and who have no criminal record. He directed the immigration court to consider whether Khalil can be granted such a waiver.

The case is: Mahmoud Khalil v. Donald Trump, 25-cv-1963, US District Court for New Jersey.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

Anthony Aarons, Steve Stroth

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