Latest news with #AmyGreer
Al Arabiya
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
US judge extends detention of pro-Palestinian protest leader
Pro-Palestinian student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil remained in US detention Friday despite an expected release, his lawyer said, following reported accusations of inaccuracies in his permanent residency application. US District Judge Michael Fabiarz had issued an order Wednesday that the government could not detain or deport Khalil, a legal permanent resident, based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio's assertions that his presence on US soil posed a national security threat. The order gave the government until Friday to release Khalil. But by Friday afternoon, the Trump administration 'represented that the Petitioner is being detained on another, second charge,' the judge wrote. The Department of Homeland Security has provided the court with press clippings from various American tabloids suggesting Khalil, who is married to a US citizen, had failed to disclose certain information about his work or involvement in a campaign to boycott Israel when applying for his permanent resident green card, ABC News reported. 'The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father's Day as a family,' Khalil attorney Amy Greer said in a statement, referring to the US holiday observed on Sunday. 'Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in ICE detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians. It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.' Since his March 8 arrest by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Khalil has become a symbol of President Donald Trump's willingness to stifle pro-Palestinian student activism against the Gaza war, in the name of curbing anti-Semitism. At the time a graduate student at New York's Columbia University, Khalil was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza. Authorities transferred Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from his home in New York to a detention center in Louisiana, pending deportation. His wife Noor Abdalla, a Michigan-born dentist, gave birth to their son while Khalil was in detention.
CTV News
13-06-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Mahmoud Khalil can remain jailed over claims he lied on green card application, judge says
Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is seen at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the Columbia University campus in New York, April 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File) NEW YORK — A federal judge who barred the Trump administration from deporting Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil declined Friday to order his release from an immigration detention center, saying the former Columbia University student hadn't yet proven he was being held illegally. The ruling is a setback for Khalil, who was detained in March. He had appeared to be close to winning his freedom after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz held that the government's initial effort to deport him on foreign policy grounds was likely unconstitutional. The New Jersey judge had given the Trump administration until Friday morning to appeal an order that could have led to Khalil's release. But the government filed court papers saying it believed it could continue detaining Khalil based on its secondary rationale for expelling him from the U.S. -- an allegation that he lied on his green card application. Farbiarz wrote in his Friday ruling that Khalil's lawyers hadn't presented enough evidence that detention on those grounds was unlawful and suggested that Khalil's next step could be to ask for bail from an immigration judge in Louisiana. One of Khalil's lawyers, Amy Greer, criticized the Trump administration's legal maneuvering as 'cruel, transparent delay tactics' meant to keep her client away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father's Day as a family. 'Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in ICE detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians,' she said in a statement. 'It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.' Khalil has previously disputed the notion that he omitted information on his application. In a filing last week, he maintained he was never employed by or served as an 'officer' of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, as the administration claims, but completed an internship approved by the university as part of his graduate studies. Khalil said he also stopped working for the British Embassy in Beirut in December 2022, when he moved to the U.S., despite the administration's claims that he had worked in the embassy's Syria office longer. Earlier Friday, Khalil's lawyers asked the judge to order his release, saying he had satisfied all of the court's requirements and that the government's lawyers had missed a morning deadline to challenge the judge's Wednesday ruling. The American Civil Liberties Union, which is among the groups representing Khalil, also released a video Friday featuring actors Mark Ruffalo, Mahershala Ali and other celebrity fathers reading a letter Khalil wrote to his newborn son from jail ahead of his first Father's Day on Sunday. 'One day you might ask why people are punished for standing up for Palestine,' read Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. 'These are hard questions, but I hope our story shows you this: The world needs more courage, not less. It needs people who choose justice over convenience.' Khalil was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. His was the first arrest under U.S. President Donald Trump's crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy. Khalil's lawyers say the Trump administration is simply trying to crack down on free speech. Khalil isn't accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The international affairs graduate student served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists. He wasn't among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics. The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic. Article by Philip Marcelo.
The Intercept
10-03-2025
- Politics
- The Intercept
Court Temporarily Halts Columbia Activist's Deportation
A New York immigration court judge ordered Monday that recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil cannot be deported from the United States until a further court order. 'To preserve the Court's jurisdiction pending a ruling on the petition, Petitioner shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court orders otherwise,' wrote Jesse M. Furman, a district court judge in Manhattan in a court order filed late Monday afternoon. The order also set a conference for attorneys on March 12. Khalil's attorney Amy Greer had filed a motion opposing his detention on Sunday and attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights and Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility project at the City University of New York School of Law were expected to file a motion on Monday demanding Khalil's release. During the campus protests that roiled Columbia University over Israel's war on Gaza, Khalil served as a negotiator and mediator between school administrators and student protesters. A permanent U.S. resident expecting his first child, he graduated in December from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. Khalil was taken from his New York apartment Saturday evening by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. He is being held without any criminal charges at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, a private jail operated by the GEO Group, according to the ICE detainee tracker. For the first 24 hours of his detention, Khalil's attorneys and family were in the dark about his whereabouts. When ICE agents showed up at Khalil's home on Saturday, they claimed his student visa had been revoked, said his attorney Amy Greer, who filed an initial petition challenging his detention over the weekend. After learning Khalil was a green card holder, agents refused to release him. Greer said the agents even threatened to arrest his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. Khalil's detention has drawn criticism and concern from rights experts, some Democratic lawmakers, and activists across the Palestinian liberation movement. A petition demanding Khalil's release amassed more than 1.5 million signatures. Activists see the disappearance and potential deportation of an activist who has not been charged with a crime as a violation of the First Amendment and a new escalation in President Donald Trump's crackdown on speech critical of Israel and its genocide of Palestinians. 'This is a very dangerous road that we're going down,' said Ramya Krishnan, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. 'That this administration is targeting students and faculty in this country based on their First Amendment-protected speech is deeply troubling and should be troubling not only for visa holders in this country, but for everyone, because it sets the really dangerous precedent that this administration can punish its political opponents in this way.' 'It means that none of us are really safe.' Trump claimed credit for Khalil's arrest on Monday afternoon, citing his previous executive orders targeting what he calls 'pro-Hamas' protesters, pledging 'this is the first arrest of many to come.' 'We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,' Trump wrote in a statement posted to his Truth Social account. 'We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.'Trump added, 'We expect every one of America's Colleges and Universities to comply.' Trump campaigned on the promise of deporting pro-Palestinian protesters and during his first days in office signed a pair of executive orders that called for crackdowns on the pro-Palestine protestmovement. One of the orders that claims to 'combat antisemitism' called on the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Education to track students and faculty who are in the U.S. on visas for possible removal. When confirming Khalil's arrest, the Department of Homeland Security alleged that he 'led activities aligned to Hamas.' Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said Trump's administration would be 'revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.' Trump administration officials have not been forthcoming about the legal grounds for Khalil's detention, noted Krishnan, the Knight First Amendment Institute attorney. 'They're deliberately obfuscating the authority that they're relying on here,' Krishnan said. 'It's possible that they had a justification at that time, but it's also possible they're searching for one now that would justify the actions that they've taken against a green card holder.' The Department of Homeland Security has not yet confirmed an immigration court date for Khalil. However, Krishnan said he has a strong First Amendment claim against his deportation. She cited the case of immigrants rights activist Ravi Ragbir, who had been targeted for deportation during Trump's first term. He was given a temporary halt for his deportation after his attorneys successfully argued in a lawsuit that the Trump administration was targeting him based on his speech critical of the administration's immigration policies. Even so, the chilling effect of Khalil's arrest is already being felt across the movement, Krishnan said. She has heard from student editors of an undergraduate political science journal who shared that international students have requested to have their articles about Gaza be removed online out of fear of immigration consequences. 'It's also important not to view this incident in isolation,' she said. 'It's part of a broader pattern by this administration of targeting its political enemies and retaliating against them, not only to silence those specific individuals and organizations, but to chill the speech of citizens more broadly.'
Bloomberg
09-03-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Immigration Officials Detain Palestinian Activist Student
A Palestinian student activist at Columbia University who led anti-Israel protests last spring was detained by immigration authorities at his home. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials entered the university-owned building in Manhattan on Saturday where Mahmoud Khalil lived and took him into custody, according to his attorney Amy Greer, the Associated Press reported.
