A federal judge in New Jersey has retained the case of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, rejecting the government’s request to move the case to Louisiana, where the Palestinian activist is being held following his arrest last month.
“The Petitioner was in New Jersey on March 9 at 4:40am. And Congress has required that the Petition must be taken as having been filed in New Jersey at that same moment. That vested this Court with jurisdiction. The Court’s jurisdiction is not defeated by the Petitioner having been moved to Louisiana,” Judge Michael Fabiarz wrote in a 67-page opinion on Tuesday.
The opinion, unless appealed by the government, would clear the way for Fabiarz to decide the more substantive issues of Khalil’s continued confinement.
Khalil, a leader of the encampment protests at Columbia last spring, was detained on March 8 at his student apartment building in New York. He was taken to 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, then to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before ending up in a Louisiana detention center, his attorneys said.
After his lawyers filed a petition for Khalil’s immediate release, a federal judge in New York last month moved the case to New Jersey.
Lawyers for Khalil urged a federal judge to keep his habeas case in New Jersey to prevent the government from a “Kafka-esque” moving of Khalil from one detention facility to another.
“We are grateful the court wisely understood that the government cannot try to manipulate the jurisdiction of the United States courts in a transparent attempt to shield their unconstitutional — and frankly chilling — behavior,” Baher Azmy, an attorney for Khalil, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We look forward to the next phase of this case, which is to get Mahmoud out of detention and into the arms of his family, and then to prove the Trump administration’s attempted deportation of Mahmoud and others is nothing but unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech.”
New Jersey is also closer to Khalil’s wife, who is about to give birth.
“I am relieved at the court’s decision today to keep my husband’s ongoing case in New Jersey,” his wife, Noor Abdalla, said in a statement Tuesday. “This is an important step towards securing Mahmoud’s freedom, but there is still a lot more to be done. As the countdown to our son’s birth begins and I inch closer and closer to my due date, I will continue to strongly advocate for Mahmoud’s freedom and for his safe return home so he can be by my side to welcome our first child.”
During a hearing on Friday over whether the case should remain in New Jersey, Azmy told the judge there is a “prohibition on forum shopping” to find a court that might be most sympathetic to the government’s position.
Outside court, Azmy said the government is simply trying to delay the adjudication of the actual legality of Khalil’s detention.
An attorney for the government, August Flentje, argued that “for jurisdictional certainty, the case belongs in Louisiana” because that is where Khalil is being held.
“The clearest route is to have the case heard in Louisiana,” Flentje said during Friday’s hearing.
After deciding on the jurisdictional question, the judge can now consider the substantive question of whether the detention of Khalil, a green card holder, was lawful.
Khalil is due to appear before an immigration judge for a removal proceeding on April 8.
He is among a half-dozen international students who have supported Palestinians to be detained by the administration in recent weeks. No charges have been filed against any of them.
The administration has argued the students’ continued presence in the country undermines American foreign policy and revoked their status. Attorneys for the students have argued the administration is punishing them for lawful activity.
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