The Trump administration, blocked by a judge from detaining Mahmoud Khalil on one set of legal grounds, has officially shifted to another as it fights to hold him in federal custody.
Justice Department lawyers told the judge, Michael E. Farbiarz, on Friday, that Mr. Khalil was being held on allegations that had been added to his case more than a week after his arrest in March. Judge Farbiarz has already suggested the allegations do not wholly explain his continued detention.
Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident of the United States, was a leader of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the school’s campus. Although he has not been accused of a crime, he was arrested in March and transferred to Louisiana, where he has been held in a federal detention center for more than three months.
Shortly after Mr. Khalil was taken into custody, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, justified his detention by invoking a rarely cited law. He declared the Columbia graduate’s presence in the United States a threat to the government’s foreign policy goal of preventing antisemitism.
Mr. Khalil’s lawyers have countered that argument by citing their client’s comments on CNN that “antisemitism and any form of racism has no place on campus and in this movement.”
Judge Farbiarz, of Federal District Court in New Jersey, found that the law Mr. Rubio invoked was most likely unconstitutional, and he ruled on Wednesday that the government could no longer detain Mr. Khalil under that justification.
He paused his order to give the administration time to appeal.
Instead, Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing submitted Friday afternoon that Mr. Khalil was being held on the allegations that had been added more than a week after his arrest: that he had failed to disclose his membership in certain organizations when he applied for legal residency in March 2024.
Scott Shuchart, a former senior homeland security official, said the government’s shifting rationale in Mr. Khalil’s case was typical of the administration’s broader approach to immigration cases.
“I find it outrageous just with regard to the disrespect with which they’ve treated the court and the entire process throughout this case,” he said, adding, “It shows nothing but contempt for the rule of law.”
A spokeswoman from the Homeland Security Department did not respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment, referring to the legal filings.
The Trump administration has accused Mr. Khalil of not having disclosed his work with a United Nations agency that assists Palestinian refugees or his membership in Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups involved in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia.
The administration has also said that Mr. Khalil did not list his continuing employment with the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after 2022.
Mr. Khalil’s lawyers have said that Mr. Khalil participated in an internship at the U.N. agency through Columbia and considered it to be coursework rather than employment. They have said Mr. Khalil was not a member of the Apartheid Divest group but a mediator, and, in any case, that he had taken on the role after applying for permanent residency.
They also have said that his employment in Syria ended during the period he indicated, a point on which an immigration judge has found in his favor. The judge has yet to rule on the two other claims.
One of Mr. Khalil’s lawyers, Marc Van Der Hout, said Friday that, overall, the allegations were “completely bogus and completely retaliatory for his First Amendment activity, speaking out on what’s going on in Gaza.”
Judge Farbiarz wrote in his Wednesday decision that it was “overwhelmingly likely” that Mr. Khalil would not be detained on the basis of the paperwork allegations alone.
He said that “lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained pending removal for the sort of alleged omissions in a lawful-permanent-resident application” of which Mr. Khalil had been accused.
But in an order Friday afternoon, the judge declined to release Mr. Khalil just because the government had shifted its rationale for his detention.
He referred back to an earlier order, in which he had written that Mr. Khalil’s lawyers had not made meaningful legal arguments about why it might be unlawful to hold their client on the paperwork allegations.
When Mr. Khalil was arrested, his detention appeared to be an important political consideration for the administration. President Trump, in a social media post, called him a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” and promised that he was the first of many people who would be arrested. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused Mr. Khalil of “siding with terrorists.”
But no link between Mr. Khalil and Hamas has been substantiated in court, and his detention appears to be a lower political priority for an administration now grappling with a multitude of other issues. Most students in situations similar to Mr. Khalil’s have already been released.
The government nearly missed two deadlines set by Judge Farbiarz related to his case on Friday.
Its response, about five minutes before the second deadline passed, resulted in another painful episode for Mr. Khalil, who is married to a U.S. citizen and who was in detention when his first child was born two months ago. It had briefly appeared as if he might be released in time to celebrate Father’s Day.
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in the New York region for The Times. He is focused on political influence and its effect on the rule of law in the area’s federal and state courts.
The post Blocked by Judge, U.S. Shifts Rationale for Detaining Mahmoud Khalil appeared first on New York Times.
