Columbia Graduate’s Legal Fight Creates Tension Among Judges

A US immigration judge accused a New Jersey federal judge of interfering with her authority in the legal fight over the detention and potential deportation of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil.

In a July 31 order, made public Friday, immigration Judge Jamee Comans wrote that she believed US District Judge Michael Farbiarz had gone too far in recent rulings releasing Khalil from custody. Comans said, pursuant to a ruling from Farbiarz, she had withdrawn an earlier decision that Khalil could be deported, but indicated she disagreed with her judicial colleague in New Jersey.

The district court’s orders have “embarked on interfering with the legal process and the authority of the immigration court bestowed upon it by Congress,” Comans, who is based in Louisiana where Khalil was being held, wrote in a footnote to her order.

Khalil’s case has become a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s crackdown on students involved in pro-Palestine campus protests. The latest filing shows how the deportation fights can create conflict between separate US legal systems — the administrative immigration courts that handle most deportation cases, and federal courts that address broader constitutional or other challenges to immigration policies.

The US has argued that Khalil, 30, a lawful permanent resident who was born in Syria, should remain in custody under a rarely-used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that the Trump administration claims gives the executive branch the power to detain and deport noncitizens if it determines they compromise US foreign policy.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Khalil’s participation in campus protests related to the war in Gaza present a threat to US foreign policy. The government has also alleged that Khalil made errors on his 2024 green card application.

The US brought a case in the Louisiana immigration court, while Khalil’s family brought a separate lawsuit that eventually ended up in front of Farbiarz in New Jersey. This started a series of conflicting rulings between the two judges.

In April, Comans in Louisiana said that Khalil could be deported under Rubio’s findings. Farbiarz ruled on June 11 that Rubio’s determination alone did not justify deportation, and then, a few days later, releasedKhalil. The government is appealing.

Comans issued a written order on June 20 related to her April findings. Farbiarz then released a decision on July 17 saying that the Trump administration had to take steps to undo that part of the immigration judge’s ruling and suggested one solution would be for Comans to vacate it.

Comans issued the July 31 order to confirm she’d taken that step, but included footnotes criticizing Farbiarz’s handling of the situation.

Immigration courts are an arm of the Justice Department within the executive branch, and its judges are appointed by the US Attorney General. District court judges are appointed by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate.

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

To contact the reporters on this story:
Anika Arora Seth in New York at aseth48@bloomberg.net;
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

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

Anthony Aarons, Elizabeth Wasserman

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