By Jonathan Allen
JENA, Louisiana (Reuters) -A U.S. immigration judge will rule on Friday whether the government can deport Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil, a month after he was arrested at his Columbia University apartment building and transferred to a Louisiana jail.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined that Khalil, a prominent figure in the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that has roiled Columbia’s New York City campus, should be removed because his presence in the U.S. has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” citing the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act.
Khalil’s case is the most high-profile test of efforts by President Donald Trump, a Republican, to deport foreign pro-Palestinian students who are in the U.S. legally and, like Khalil, have not been charged with any crime.
Khalil, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and holds Algerian citizenship, became a U.S. lawful permanent resident last year.
His lawyers have complained they are being rushed to review the evidence that the government submitted on Wednesday on the orders of Judge Jamee Comans of the LaSalle Immigration Court. The court sits inside a jail complex for immigrants surrounded by double-fenced razor wire run by private government contractors in rural Louisiana.
In a two-page letter submitted to the court and Khalil’s lawyers, which they shared with reporters, Rubio wrote that Khalil, 30, should be removed for his role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”
Rubio’s letter did not accuse Khalil of breaking any laws, but he said that his department can revoke an immigrant’s legal status even where their beliefs, associations or statements are “otherwise lawful.”
Khalil’s lawyers said they will ask Judge Comans at Friday’s hearing to allow them to subpoena Rubio and depose him.
Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of Khalil’s attorneys, told a press briefing on Thursday that Rubio’s letter “is a sort of tacky, Soviet-style diktat that’s equal parts empty and chilling.”
Khalil and his lawyers say the U.S. government is targeting him only for speech that is protected under the U.S. Constitution, including the right to criticize U.S. foreign policy. Khalil says criticism of the U.S. government’s support of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism.
A State Department spokesperson said the department does not comment on ongoing legal cases.
Judge Comans said on Tuesday she would rule on whether Khalil can be deported or the government’s case should be terminated, freeing him, by the end of this week.
In a separate case in a New Jersey federal court, Khalil is challenging what he says is his unconstitutional arrest, detention and transfer to a jail some 1,200 miles (1,930 km) from his family and lawyers in New York City.
The U.S. immigration court system is run and its judges appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice, separate from the government’s judicial branch.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Jena, Louisana; Additional reporting by Luc Cohen; editing by Donna Bryson and Lincoln Feast.)
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