For other people named Mahmoud Khalil, see Mahmoud Khalil. Mahmoud Khalil v. Donald J. Trump[1][2][3][4]CourtUnited States District Court for the District of New Jersey, transferred from United States District Court for the Southern District of New YorkFull case name Mahmoud KHALIL, Petitioner, v. William P. JOYCE, in his official capacity as Acting Field Office Director of New York, Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Caleb VITELLO, Acting Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Kristi NOEM, in her official capacity as Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security; and Pamela BONDI, Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Respondents.[5] StartedMarch 9, 2025Docket nos.2:25-cv-01963, having been transferred from 1:25-cv-01935Court membershipJudge sittingMichael E. Farbiarz (transferred from Jesse M. Furman)Laws appliedU.S. Const. amend. I, Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952KeywordsFree speechimmigrants' rights The detention of Mahmoud Khalil (March 8–June 20, 2025; 104 days) was the US federal government's incarceration and attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University and a lead negotiator of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment during the Gaza war and genocide. On March 8, 2025, plainclothes US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents took Khalil—who had not been accused of, charged with, or convicted of any crime[6][7]—from his Columbia residential apartment building in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City.[8][9][10] The agents did not have a warrant[11] and were acting on orders from the State Department to revoke Khalil's student visa. When the agents were informed that Khalil is a lawful permanent resident, they said that status would be revoked instead.[8] By March 10, ICE had transported Khalil to its LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana,[9][12] where he was held until being released on bail on June 20.[13] The detention became the first publicly known deportation effort related to pro-Palestine activism during the presidency of Donald Trump, who threatened to punish students and others for allegedly engaging in activities aligned to Hamas.[8] Khalil's detention received widespread backlash from civil rights organizations, members of the Democratic Party, and lawyers, who argue that it was an attack on freedom of speech and the First Amendment.[14] There was no criminal charge against Khalil;[7] instead, the government's argument depends on a section of the Cold War–era Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA), which provides that aliens in the U.S. may be deported if the secretary of state believes their presence will have serious negative consequences for U.S. foreign policy.[15][16] Several journalists and human rights organizations have noted this law's connection to McCarthyism.[17][18] On April 1, 2025, New Jersey federal district judge Michael E. Farbiarz issued a stay on Khalil's deportation while the court considered the constitutionality of his arrest and detention.[19][20] Farbiarz later ruled that the relevant section of the INA was likely unconstitutional[21] and ordered that Khalil be released on bail.[22] After the government appealed, the Third Circuit ruled on January 15, 2026, that Khalil must exhaust the immigration court system before resuming his case in the federal court system.[23] On April 11, 2025, Louisiana immigration judge Jamee E. Comans ruled that Khalil was deportable under Secretary of State Marco Rubio's assertion that Khalil's continued presence posed "adverse foreign policy consequences". Comans said she had no authority to question that determination.[24][25] She later ruled that Khalil was deportable to Syria or Algeria on the basis that he had omitted information about his organization memberships when he applied for his green card.[26] Khalil is appealing to the Board of Immigration Appeals.[26] The targeting of Khalil has been described as an example of the Palestine exception.[27][28][29][30][31][32] Background Biography Mahmoud Khalil Mahmoud Khalil was a graduate student at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at the time of the 2024 Columbia University pro-Palestinian campus occupations.[8] He is an Algerian citizen with a green card confirming his lawful permanent residency in the U.S.[33][34] Khalil's grandparents lived in Tiberias, Palestine (now Israel), before being forced to flee to Syria in the 1948 Nakba.[35][36] Khalil was born in a Palestinian refugee enclave in Damascus, Syria, in 1995, to Palestinian parents.[37][35] He and his family fled to Lebanon in 2012 after the onset of the Syrian civil war.[38][39] Khalil has Algerian citizenship through his mother's family, who were reportedly Algerian revolutionaries displaced to the Ottoman Empire.[40] Journalist Lauren Bohn, who met Khalil in Beirut while reporting on the Syrian refugee crisis, said Khalil "often referred to himself as a 'double refugee' as a Palestinian in Syria and a Syrian refugee in Lebanon".[38] Bohn reported that Khalil taught himself English while working with Syrian refugees through the Syrian-American education nonprofit Junsoor.[38] Simultaneously, he earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from the Lebanese American University in Beirut.[38][36] Khalil then spent years working for the British government's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, managing the Chevening Scholarship from the British embassy in Beirut and supporting diplomats with his language skills and local knowledge.[39] In 2016, Khalil met Noor Abdalla when she joined a volunteer program that he was overseeing in Lebanon. They began a seven-year long-distance relationship. In 2022, Khalil immigrated to the U.S. on a student visa to attend SIPA.[41] As a student, he interned for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a United Nations relief agency that supports Palestinian refugees.[38] Khalil married Abdalla in New York in 2023. Abdalla is a U.S. citizen and a dentist.[41] Khalil received his green card in 2024.[41] He completed work on his master's degree in December 2024 and was due to graduate in May 2025.[41][42] At the time of Khalil's arrest on March 8, 2025, Abdalla was pregnant with a late April due date.[41] Khalil's attorneys requested a temporary release so that he could be with his wife during their son's birth, but the New Orleans ICE Director denied the request.[43] Abdalla gave birth on April 21, while Khalil was in detention in Louisiana. Khalil later called the government's refusal to let him be present at his son's birth "a clear act of cruelty just to punish me".[44] Despite the Trump administration's opposition, a federal district judge in New Jersey approved a meeting, and on May 22, Khalil met his son and saw his wife for the first time since he was detained.[45] Khalil's participation in Columbia University protests The second, autonomous[46][47] iteration on the West Lawn (April 18–30), during which Khalil helped negotiate on behalf of the encampment with representatives of Columbia's administration.[48] As a Columbia student, Khalil was involved with activism in solidarity with Palestine during the Gaza war and genocide, often seen at protests unmasked.[35][49] In April 2024, Khalil represented the Gaza Solidarity Encampment as a spokesperson and negotiator with Columbia's administration.[50] The encampment, as well as the broader Columbia protests in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza, demanded that the university officially call for an end to the war and genocide and divest from Israel, especially from companies whose products, services, or infrastructure it has extensively used in its military operations in Gaza.[51] The negotiations went on for 10 days, from April 19 to 29.[52] According to the Columbia Daily Spectator, Columbia's leadership did not reveal the chain of command outside the negotiation room and "positioned key administrators to be the public face for negotiations and kept others within University leadership, including the trustees, away from the conversation" so that "the protesters never came into direct dialogue with those empowered to answer their demands".[52] On the morning of April 29, Shafik announced in a university-wide email[53] that negotiations had ceased without having reached an agreement, and that Columbia would "not divest from Israel".[54][55] In a 2024 interview, Khalil said, "As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand by hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other."[35] He characterized the movement as one "for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone". Discussing concerns about antisemitism, Khalil said: "There is, of course, no place for antisemitism. What we are witnessing is anti-Palestinian sentiment that's taking different forms, and antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism [are] some of these forms."[36] In an interview with CNN, Khalil said Jewish activists were a key part of the pro-Palestinian movement.[56] At the time, Khalil was on a student visa that required full-time enrollment. He said he avoided "high-risk" protests and communicated with the university to ensure he would not create trouble, as any suspension would jeopardize his student visa. On April 30, 2024, he received an email from Columbia suspending him for alleged participation in the Columbia tent encampments, but the university retracted the suspension within a day after reviewing their evidence. The Columbia University's president's office called him to apologize for the mistake.[57] Columbia administrators described Khalil as a principled, good-faith negotiator who worked with them to reduce encampments.[49] In September 2024, after new demonstrations began on campus, Khalil said students would continue to protest as long as "Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid", and that this might include further encampments or other forms of protest.[58] On March 6, 2025, the Associated Press reported that Columbia University's newly created Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) had opened investigations of a number of students to address allegations that they had engaged in anti-Israel or antisemitic discrimination. Amy Greer, a lawyer advising several students, said that Columbia was bowing "to governmental pressure to suppress and chill protected speech".[59] The university's allegations against Khalil focused on his alleged involvement in the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition and his alleged role in circulating social media posts critical of Zionism and organizing what the university administration called an "unauthorized marching event", in which some participants purportedly glorified the October 7 attacks.[8] Khalil told the Associated Press, "I have around 13 allegations against me. Most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with".[59] Columbia threatened to block Khalil from graduating for refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement but withdrew the threat after Khalil appealed through a lawyer.[59] Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) was a coalition of over 120 student organizations at Columbia University that formed after Columbia's administration irregularly banned chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in November 2023.[60][61][62][63] CUAD demanded that Columbia stop investing its $14.8 billion endowment in companies supporting Israel's government,[41] dismantle a university outpost in Tel Aviv, and end collaboration with Israeli universities.[64] In referendums, the student bodies at Columbia and affiliated Barnard College voted in favor of these initiatives by large margins.[65][66] Online campaign against Khalil Prior to his arrest, Khalil was targeted by an online campaign to have him deported.[67] Far-right Jewish group Betar US posted on Twitter in January 2025 that it had given his information to "multiple contacts" and that ICE was "aware of his home address and whereabouts".[68] Canary Mission, a pro-Israel doxing website, also compiled a webpage about him.[49] According to an email Khalil sent to Columbia president Katrina Armstrong on March 7, the campaign was led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer, who had labeled him a "security threat" and called for his deportation.[68] The New York Times said that Davidai "called on Marco Rubio to deport Mr. Khalil".[67] Khalil urged Armstrong and Columbia to "intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm" and asked for legal support for himself and other international students threatened with deportation.[68] After Khalil attended a protest at Barnard in early March 2025, Ross Glick, a pro-Israel activist, met with aides to United States senator John Fetterman and Ted Cruz to discuss Khalil.[69] According to Glick, the aides promised that their respective senators would "escalate" attention to Khalil.[69] According to Khalil's wife, he was subject to an "intense" campaign in the week before his arrest, when false claims were spread about him.[70] The day before his detention, Khalil privately reported to Columbia officials incendiary statements that had inspired hateful responses and calls for his deportation, saying, "I haven't been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home".[68] Zeteo reported that these included a "threatening post by the pro-Israel organization Betar in January", in which the group claimed "he said 'Zionists don't deserve to live'—a statement Khalil 'unequivocally' denied making".[68] The quote came from a different student, who was expelled.[49] Trump administration actions While campaigning for a second term as U.S. president, Trump consistently said he would cancel the visas of international students who take part in pro-Palestinian protests. At a rally on October 16, 2023, he said, "Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical, anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home".[71] After taking office, Trump signed Executive Order 14188 on January 29, 2025.[72] Among other things, the order singles out institutions of higher education and calls for the deportation of students with visas who have broken laws during any anti-Israel protest since the October 7 attacks.[73][72] On March 4, 2025, Trump said federal funding would stop for any school "that allows illegal protests", that "agitators" would be imprisoned or deported, and that American students would be expelled or arrested.[74] The U.S. State Department said it would use artificial intelligence to review thousands of student visa holders' social media accounts as well as news reports of demonstrations to identify foreign nationals allegedly engaging in