A US federal judge said President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil are likely unconstitutional.
New Jersey District Judge Michael Farbeers wrote Wednesday that the government’s claim that Halil constituted a threat to US national security and foreign policy was unlikely to succeed.
“Does a normal person have the feeling that he could be taken out of the US because he’s compromised?[d]”American ‘foreign policy’ – that is, because he compromised his relationship with other countries – does the secretary not determine that his actions had an impact on his relationship with the United States and foreign countries? ” wrote Farbiarz.
Farbiarz did not immediately control the question of whether Khalil’s initial right to amendment to free speech was violated. He also did not order an immediate release of Khalil, citing unanswered questions about his permanent resident application.
The judge is expected to take further action in the coming days.
The ruling against the government will be the latest legal setback to the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian activities throughout the United States in the name of a fight against national security and anti-Semitism.
However, critics accused the Trump administration of violating fundamental constitutional rights in their efforts to do so.
Halil, a legal permanent resident of the United States, was the first famous arrest made in the Trump administration’s push to expel student protesters involved in demonstrating Israel’s war in Gaza.
Former graduate student, Halil served as a spokesman for the anti-war protest at Columbia University. However, on March 8th, the 30-year-old was arrested at the New York City Student Housing Hall of Fame, where his wife, Dr. Noor Abdallah, filmed the incident.
He was then transferred from a New Jersey detention center to one of Jena, Louisiana, where his lawyers struggled to confirm his location. He remains imprisoned at a facility in Jena, with the US government calling for his deportation.
In an official statement, Halil said his detention is part of an effort to cool opposition to the US support of Israel’s war, which has been described as genocide by human rights groups and UN experts.
Civil Liberties Organizations are also wary that Halil’s detention appears to presuppose his political views, not his political views. Halil has not been charged with a crime.
In Louisiana, Halil continues to face immigration courts that overwhelm his deportation. But in front of a US federal court in Newark, New Jersey, Halil’s lawyers claim a habeas-protection petition, a case in which a client is illegally detained.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, acting on behalf of the Trump administration, cited the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act as the legal basis for Halil’s detention.
Cold War era law provides that the Secretary of State can deport foreigners if the person is deemed to have “potentially serious and unfavorable foreign policy effects.”
However, the law is rarely used and raises concerns about a dispute with amendments to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free speech regardless of citizenship.
Judge Farbeers appeared to reflect that concern, warning that the Trump administration’s rationale appears to meet the criteria for “constitutional ambiguity.”
That means that Halil’s petition “is likely to succeed in the merits of his claims” that the government’s actions are unconstitutional, the judge wrote Wednesday.
Halil’s legal team praised the judge’s order, and then the district court has kept what we already know.
Halil is one of the most well-known students who tested the constitutional boundaries of the Trump administration’s actions.
Other international students detained Palestinian politics, including Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk and Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi.
However, Halil is in custody. The government has rejected a request for temporary release of Khalil by allowing him to witness the birth of his son in April.
He also tried to prevent him from detaining his newborn son during a visiting session at a Louisiana detention center.
“I am furious at the cruelty and inhumanity of this system and am dare to call for myself exactly,” Khalil’s wife Abdallah said in a statement.
She said Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) denied the family “this most basic human rights” after flying over 1,000 miles to visit him in Louisiana with his newborn son.
The judge blocked these efforts with ICE last week, and was able to hug her son for the first time, more than a month after Khalil was born.
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