An agent honored by Donald Trump during his address to Congress in 2019 was one of the officers who arrested Mahmoud Khalil in New York City, according to attorneys for the Columbia University student and lawful permanent resident who is now facing deportation for his role in pro-Palestine campus protests.
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took Khalil’s biometrics after his arrest, an agent said “the White House is requesting an update,” lawyers wrote in a court filing in Manhattan on Thursday.
After a brief court appearance this week, Khalil’s attorneys are now asking a judge to bring Khalil back to New York after he was moved to a detention center in Louisiana, and for an order that blocks the Trump administration from similarly threatening noncitizens from removal from the country over support for Palestine.
Following a series of statements from U.S. officials — and the president himself — attacking Khalil, who has not been charged with committing any crime, lawyers argue that the Trump administration has violated Khalil’s First Amendment rights with a “targeted, retaliatory detention and attempted removal of a student protester because of his constitutionally protected speech.”
The new filing updates an earlier petition to the court to challenge his initial arrest, which has sparked international outcry and fears that the administration is moving to crush political dissidents, starting with campus demonstrations against Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza and U.S. support.
Lawyers with Trump’s Department of Justice admit that their attempt to deport Khalil is based only on Secretary of State Marco Rubio having “reasonable grounds to believe that his presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” despite being a lawful permanent resident with a green card. On Wednesday, Rubio accused Khalil of engaging in “antisemitic activities” and supporting Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, echoing previous statements by Trump. Khalil’s lawyers have called those assertions “false.”
Khalil, who is Palestinian, grew up in a refugee camp in Syria. He entered the United States on a student visa in 2022 to pursue a master’s degree in public administration, which he completed last year. His anticipated graduation date is May 2025.
He became a lawful permanent resident in 2024. His wife, a U.S. citizen, is eight months pregnant.
Khalil “has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide and criticized Columbia University for, in his view, financing and in other ways facilitating such violence,” his attorneys wrote.
He is “committed to peaceful protest and being a voice for his people,” they wrote.
The filing quotes an interview Khalil gave to CNN during campus demonstrations, telling a reporter that “the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand and you cannot achieve one without the other.” He also called the student movement “a movement for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone.”
On March 7, following months of public scrutiny, he told Columbia’s interim president in an email that he cannot sleep and he fears “ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home.”
The following night, plainclothes agents followed Khalil and his wife into the lobby of an apartment building and identified themselves as Department of Homeland Security officers, and two other officers approached from inside the building, the filing states. They never produced a warrant, according to his attorneys.
Khalil called his attorney Amy Greer, who then spoke to agent Elvin Hernandez, who was hailed by Trump as one of the nation’s “law enforcement heroes” in his state of the union address in 2019.
Hernandez told her Khalil’s student visa and green card were being revoked and he was being taken to an ICE field office in Manhattan, then hung up, according to the filing.
Khalil’s wife then showed an agent his green card, the filing states. “The agent looked confused when he saw the documents and said, ‘He has a green card’ to the individual with whom he was on the phone,” and “Mr. Khalil’s wife heard the agent repeat that they were being ordered to bring Mr. Khalil in anyway,” according to Khalil’s lawyers.
The agents “threatened” that Khalil’s wife “would also be arrested if she did not comply,” the complaint says.
While in custody, Khalil was repeatedly denied a lawyer when he asked to speak with one, according to his attorneys. He spent the night at a detention center in New Jersey waiting to be processed and was then sent back to New York and put on a plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport the next day on March 9.
Khalil was put on an American Airlines flight around 2:45 p.m. to Dallas, Texas, during which he saw an agent receive a message that said he cannot have a phone call, according to his lawyers.
He spent roughly four hours in Dallas and was then placed on another American Airlines flight to Louisiana. He arrived there at roughly 1 a.m. March 10 and was driven in handcuffs and shackles to a detention center in Jena.
There, when he told agents that he has an ulcer and needs to take his medication for it every day, he didn’t receive any until the next evening, according to his attorneys.
“Throughout this process, Mr. Khalil felt as though he was being kidnapped,” attorneys wrote. “He was reminded of prior experience fleeing arbitrary detention in Syria and forced disappearance of his friends in Syria in 2013. It was shortly after this that Mr. Khalil left Syria. At no time throughout this process did any of the agents identify themselves.”
He is worried about the wellbeing of his wife and their unborn child and is “very concerned” about the possibility he will not be there for his child’s birth, his lawyers wrote. He also was set to start a new job next month and now fears the loss of income and lack of health insurance for his family, they said.
In remarks outside federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, attorney Ramzi Kassem with the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project at CUNY School of Law called the government’s grounds for revoking Khalil’s green card “absolutely unprecedented.”
“It cannot be the case that you can be disappeared at night, off the streets of New York city, simply because the current administration in the White House dislikes what you have to say,” he said.
