The lawyers of the Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil and the Trump administration faced Khalil’s renewed request to be released on bail or, at least, transferred to a detention center in New Jersey to be closer to the family.
Both parties presented new presentations after the American district judge Michael Farbiar declined to free Khalil last week. Although Farbiar had blocked Khalil’s detention and deportation based on accusations that his presence in the country threatened the foreign policy of the United States, the administration argued that he would continue to stop Khalil for allegedly lying in his application for permanent residence.
Judge Farbiar said that he was “overwhelmingly likely” that Khalil was not arrested solely for accusations related to his residence application. However, the judge finally put himself on the side of the government, discovering that Khalil’s legal team had not successfully argued why the arrest for these reasons would be illegal.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident and former student of the University of Columbia, was arrested in March by immigration agents and has been held since then in an installation in the rural area of Jena, Louisiana. He played an active role in the protests about the war in Gaza on the Campus of New York City last year, negotiating between student protesters and university administration.
His lawyers urged the court this week to immediately release him from a Louisiana detention center on bail, and added that the administration’s efforts to keep him detained based on alleged omissions in an immigration request were “rare and extremely unusual.”
The accusations, which were presented after Khalil’s arrest, included claims that he did not reveal a continuous job at the British embassy in Beirut and an previous role as an officer at the United Nations Agency for Relief and Works for Palestine Refugees in New York.
NBC News discovered that the Administration had been based on not verified tabloid items and made erroneous statements about Khalil’s work history after reviewing more than 100 pages of evidence presented by the Government.
Khalil has no criminal record and has not been accused of a crime.
In judicial documents, Khalil’s lawyers said their custody “is equivalent to more unconstitutional reprisals and adds to extraordinary circumstances that guarantee relief.”
“As it has done during the last three months, the government is using all the tools available to hinder justice for Mahmoud,” Brett Max Kaufman, main advisor to ACLU, said. “The government practically never keeps people arrested for a position like this, and it is clear that the government is doing everything possible to punish Mahmoud for their speech on Palestine.”
If he did not release, Khalil’s lawyers asked him to be transferred to a detention center in New Jersey, pointing out a policy that requires non -citizens or legal guardians, who are main caregivers or have the custody of minor children, to be placed in facilities close to their children.
According to the emails reviewed by NBC News, Khalil’s legal team asked ICE to transfer him to New Jersey earlier this month to be closer to his newborn son. However, the New Orleans ICE field office said Khalil did not comply with the policy criteria and denied the request without explanation.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration retreated in the judicial documents, arguing that the accusations of green card application “independently” justified Khalil’s arrest.
In judicial documents, the Department of Justice said that the federal judge “should not order Khalil’s direct release, because doing so would prevent the government’s discretionary decision from stopping it for independent legal reasons. Congress prohibited judicial intervention on those decisions.”
The Trump administration said the National Security Department, not the courts, also has the authority to determine where people are held in deportation procedures.
In response to Khalil’s lawyers who cite the agency’s policy for transfer, the Trump administration said: “They are policies or guidelines, not regulations.”
The lawyers of the Department of Justice added that the detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, is above the capacity and ordering a transfer “would undoubtedly affect the continuous efforts of the installation to resort to operational standards.”
The Department of Justice declined to comment, and the National Security and ICE departments did not immediately respond to the request for comments of NBC News.
