An immigration judge has given the US government a day to show its evidence that Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil should be deported and said she would rule on the government's case on Friday, a month after he was arrested in New York and transferred 1,200 miles to a rural Louisiana jail.
"If he's not removable, I'm going to be terminating this case on Friday," Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans said during a hearing at the LaSalle Immigration Court in Jena, Louisiana, on Tuesday.
If the government's deportation case is terminated at the hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon, Khalil, 30, is free under immigration law.
The government cannot challenge the termination, but if the judge terminates the case without prejudice it can attempt to file the removal case again. Khalil sat at a table in the courtroom, wrapping prayer beads around his right hand, as he listened to his attorney Marc Van Der Hout appear remotely from California on a nearby screen to tell the court he had not received a single document of the government's evidence.
"There's nothing more important to this court than Mr. Khalil's due process rights," Comans told Van Der Hout after he asked for more time to review the government's evidence.
"I'm also not going to keep Mr. Khalil detained while attorneys go back and forth about documents."
Department of Homeland Security lawyers told Comans they would provide the evidence by her 5 pm Wednesday deadline.
Since Donald Trump's inauguration, the US has intensified its immigration crackdown. While some faced penalties for voicing opinions on the Gaza war, others were detained or deported for various reasons.
'Relief from removal'
During Tuesday's hearing, Comans read the government's allegations, and Van Der Hout responded with "deny" to each. The immigration case is separate from a challenge to the legality of his March arrest, known as a habeas corpus petition.
A US district judge hearing Khalil's habeas petition has ruled that he must remain in the US for now while he considers Khalil's petition to either free him or move him to New Jersey.
If Comans rules on Friday that Khalil can be deported, he would then be able to ask her to rule on whether he is eligible for "relief from removal," which can be granted in limited cases, including a fear of persecution in the immigrant's home country. Khalil can also appeal her rulings.
The hearing had been delayed nearly a half hour because the judge could not find some of Khalil's lawyers among what the judge said was nearly 600 people trying to access the video feed, evidence of the high interest in the case.
The judge allowed in only lawyers and, at Khalil's request, his wife.
Student protest organisers, including some Jewish groups, say criticism of Israel is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism. Khalil, a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Syria, has called himself a political prisoner. His lawyers have argued the Trump administration improperly targeted him for his political views in violation of his right to free speech guaranteed by the US Constitution's First Amendment. Khalil's wife, Noor Abdalla, is a US citizen and is due to give birth to their first child this month. She has not been able to travel to Louisiana to visit him due to her pregnancy.
Mahmoud Khalil says his arrest is a testament to the power of students in shifting the public opinion towards the liberation of Palestine.
Crackdown on students
Since Khalil's arrest, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said he has revoked the visas of hundreds of foreign students.
A few days after Khalil's arrest, another pro-Palestine student, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian researcher at Georgetown University, was arrested. His attorney said he was arrested because of the Palestinian identity of his wife.
After the arrest of Suri, authorities went after another pro-Palestine student, Momodou Taal, asking him to turn himself in.
On March 25, Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student, said she sued the Trump administration to stop her deportation from the US over her participation in a pro-Palestine protest last Spring.
Also on March 25, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University PhD student, was kidnapped in brought daylight by authorities over criticism of Israel.
Other students, like Leqaa Kordia, Ranjani Srinivasan, and Alireza Doroudi have either been detained or self-deported.
The march comes as Trump pushes forward with a heavy crackdown on pro-Palestine activism, something protesters argue won't stop with Arabs and Muslims.
Universities targeted
Trump also targeted US universities for allowing pro-Palestine protests on their campus.
He started with Columbia, which ignited a wave of pro-Palestine protests across US campuses, cancelling $400 million in federal funding to the university.
The university ultimately yielded to his pressure, announcing sweeping policy changes, including campus protest policies.
He then targeted Harvard, launching a review of alleged anti-Semitism and threatened to withdraw $9 billion in federal funding from the university.
The move came after the university dismissed the leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in an attempt to distance itself from pro-Palestine voices and allegations of bias.
