Trump Admin: Columbia Protest Leader Mahmoud Khalil Withheld Info When Applying for Residency

By:  Hadassa Kalatizadeh

The Trump Administration now has new accusations against pro-Hamas Columbia University graduate, Mahmoud Khalil.

As reported by the NY Times, the activist who had allegedly lead campus protests had been detained earlier this month based on a rarely used law.  Now, the government has added new accusations, strengthening their case against the legal permanent resident.  When Khalil was first arrested in Louisiana and taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the argument against him said he should be deported to help prevent the spread of anti-Semitism, claiming he poses a threat to the country’s foreign-policy agenda.

Khalil’s lawyers rapidly shot back that his free speech in criticizing Israel and promoting Palestinian rights was constitutionally protected.  Last week, the government added new accusations, saying that Khalil had willfully withheld information when he applied for permanent residency status last March.  They said he failed to disclose his membership in several organizations, including a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, and the Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups that set off pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school.

Also, the filing adds that Khalil failed to list his continuing employment with the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after 2022. The new allegations will help the Trump administration circumvent the free speech issues, raised by Khalil’s lawyers.  On Sunday, in a filing opposing his release, Justice Department lawyers said that the new allegations limit the relevance of Khalil’s right to freedom of speech.  “Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring,” the Justice Department wrote, adding that the new allegation creates an “independent basis” for his deportation.

Khalil, who received his master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International Affairs last December, has become one of the most high-profile leaders of Columbia University anti-Israel protests, and served as a negotiator for students as they bargained with university officials over an end to the tent encampment erected on campus last spring.  His name was also among those under investigation for disciplinary charges against dozens of students for their pro-Hamas activism, by a Columbia

University office, which opened up after the Ivy League school had hundreds of millions cut in federal funding due to their failure to curb anti-Semitism on campus.  Per the Times, Secretary of State Marco Rubio,  has also accused Mr. Khalil of leading anti-Semitic activities—in which students at protests expressed support for Hamas.

“The new deportation grounds are patently weak and pretextual,” said one of Mr. Khalil’s lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, a co-director of CLEAR, a legal clinic at the City University of New York. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers are expected to argue that the new accusations are just a pretext for continued retaliation against Khalil for his speech. “That the government scrambled to add them at the 11th hour only highlights how its motivation from the start was to retaliate against Mr. Khalil for his protected speech in support of Palestinian rights and lives.”

According to the information provided in The NY Times report, his lawyers are fighting for his release from detention in a New Jersey federal court. This is an effort to reunite Mr. Khalil with his wife, who is an American citizen and who is expected to give birth next month.  There are also separate immigration court proceedings against him, being held in Louisiana, which may lead to his deportation.  In order to deport Mr. Khalil on the basis of the new allegations, the government would have to convince an immigration judge that failure to disclose the information was willful and that it would have made a difference in the decision to grant him legal permanent residency status.