The AP reports that a federal judge that blocked the Trump administration from deporting former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil declined Friday to order his release from an immigration detention center, saying Khalil had not yet proven his detention was illegal.
The ruling “is a setback for Khalil,” who was detained on March 8. Khalil, a legal U.S. resident, “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.”
Farbiarz gave the government until Friday morning to appeal an order which could have led to Khalil’s release. Yet the government filed court papers indicating that Khalil could be detained based on its second rationale for holding him — “an allegation that he lied on his green card application.”
Farbiarz, however, suggested that Khalil’s lawyers could ask for bail from an immigration judge in Louisiana. Khalil “has previously disputed the notion that he omitted information” on his green card application.
Diverse previously reported that Khalil served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists at Columbia University who occupied a campus lawn last spring. Khalil is Palestinian and was born in Syria after his grandparents were forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Tiberias.
