Judge allows Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation

A US judge has ruled the government can deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate arrested last month by immigration officers.

Mr Khalil has been held at a Louisiana detention centre since 8 March, when US immigration officers told him he was being deported for taking part in campus protests against the war in Gaza.

The pro-Palestinian activist is a permanent legal US resident, and has not been charged with a crime. The government is seeking to remove him under a Cold War-era immigration law.

In a letter written from the facility, Mr Khalil has said his “arrest was a direct consequence” of speaking out for Palestine.

The judge said the Trump administration was allowed to move forward with its effort to deport Mr Khalil because the argument that he poses “adverse foreign policy consequences” for the US is “facially reasonable”.

The judge gave Khalil’s lawyers until 23 April to appeal against his deportation to Algeria or Syria.

“I would like to quote what you said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness,” Mr Khalil said in court.

“Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process,” he said. “This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family.”