Khalil immigration case transferred to New Jersey

A judge said Wednesday that Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University alum and green-card holder who has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will have his case transferred to New Jersey.

The federal government, which is targeting Khalil over his participation in pro-Palestinian protests, had transferred him to Louisiana, where it wants the case to be heard, while his attorneys want it to be litigated in New York.

“[T]he law precludes this Court from reaching the merits of Khalil’s claims, as serious and important as they may be, and it mandates that the Court allow a tribunal with jurisdiction to take the matter up from here,” Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York said.

Furman said New Jersey is where Khalil was initially detained and the only place he could have filed his petition, dictating his case should be litigated there. A next hearing date in the case has not been set.

The federal government has not charged Khalil with a crime since he was arrested by ICE on March 8 but says he poses a national security threat.

“A green-card holder doesn’t have an indefinite right to be in the United States,” Vice President Vance said on Fox News last week. “This is not about ‘free speech.’ Yes, it’s about national security — but more importantly, it’s about who we, as American citizens, decide gets to join our national community.”

But Carolina DeCell, a senior staff attorney for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, previously told The Hill that green-card holders are such as Khalil "entitled to almost the full scope of First Amendment rights that U.S. citizens are."

"And so, taking action to strip someone of a green card or deport them from this country based solely on their political speech or participation in political protests would almost certainly be unconstitutional," DeCell said.

"I would say this appears to be part of a broader effort to chill the speech of political opponents, or people with whom this administration disagrees on political issues, and it sets a really terrible precedent."

Khalil is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent who is married to a U.S. citizen.

President Trump had pledged to crack down on student protesters last year on the campaign trail, and his administration has made clear that it sees Khalil's arrested and attempted deportation as the first of many such actions against foreign-born students.

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