Judge Halts Deportation Order Temporarily

After all the furor this morning over the arrest of Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, a federal judge in New York has blocked any efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to deport the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist who was arrested Saturday night. The hold order is temporary pending a conference on Wednesday evening. His attorney has not said whether he will appear in court on Wednesday.

“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,” Monday’s filing said.

Full stop. The judge’s action makes it clear that even the President cannot circumvent the rule of law regarding immigration. Khalil is currently being held at a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana. It is not known if he will be moved back to New York for the conference.

One of the things that is important to understand is that Khalil’s attorney still does not know exactly what crime, if any, he is being charged with. When she asked ICE agents for a copy of the warrant, they hung up on her. This increases the chances that his arrest and detention are both highly illegal.

In a statement Monday evening, the university interim president Katrina Armstrong said, “Rumors suggesting that any member of Columbia leadership requested the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on or near campus are false.”

“We are taking a methodical and thoughtful approach to addressing the multitude of challenges ahead of us. We are engaged with several federal agencies and are doing all we can to be responsive to their legitimate concerns and to take corrective action, under the law, to restore funding,” Armstrong added.

Any blame for this situation falls squarely on the President’s shoulders and in statements on Monday, he didn’t shy away from that blame, saying that this is “the first 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,” Felonious Punk wrote in a social media post. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”

We have since discovered that Federal immigration authorities also visited a second international student at Columbia on Friday evening and attempted to take her into custody but were not allowed to enter the apartment, according to a union representing the student.

The U.S. Education Department on Monday warned some 60 colleges, including Harvard and Cornell, that they could lose federal money if they fail to uphold civil rights laws against antisemitism and ensure “uninterrupted access” to campus facilities and education opportunities. The administration is already pulling $400 million from Columbia.

Everyone remotely connected to the arrest is pissed, and rightly so. “The attack on Mahmoud Khalil is intended to make them quake in their boots, and to make all of us quake in our boots,” said Michael Thaddeus, a Columbia math professor. “Our message to Washington is that we are not silenced, we are not afraid, and we stand together, determined to defeat this ongoing assault on our fundamental rights.”

A few hundred protesters rallied near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Manhattan on Monday to demand Khalil’s release.

“By arresting Mahmoud, Trump thinks he can strip us of our rights and strip us of our commitment to our people,” Ibtihal Malley, a New York University student, told the crowd. “To that, we say: You are wrong.”

Other universities are mentioning quietly, certainly not on the record, that they are concerned that Khalil’s arrest could turn into a flash point for students, prompting more protests. One official who asked to not be named because they did not have the authority to speak for their university, said that Regents were holding online meetings, preparing for what they anticipate could be a serious backlash to Khalil’s treatment.

This story is far from being over. Don’t be afraid to speak out. Every voice counts.