A Columbia University student says the bed bug subject never occurred after the bed bug target was arrested and jumped into a Louisiana detention center. Authorities say they forced a long journey of fearing that they would soon be deported from their role in the campus protests against Israel.
“I’ve never heard anyone mention bed bugs,” Mahmoud Khalil said in a declaration filed Monday in Manhattan federal courtroom, where he was held all night at the Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Khalil issued a statement in an exhibit attached to court documents asking his lawyer to be released on bail, as the court decided whether the arrest violated the initial amendment.
The lawyers also urged judges to expand the effectiveness of the order that prevented the U.S. government from “arrest, detaining and eliminating non-citizens engaged in constitutionally protected expression activities to support criticism of Palestinian rights or Israel.”
In his declaration, Halil said he was put in the van when he was taken from Elizabeth’s facility and asked if he was returned to FBI headquarters in Manhattan.
“I was told, ‘No, I’m going to JFK airport.’ I was worried that they were trying to expel me,” he recalled.
Of his time spent at Elizabeth’s facility, he wrote:
In court documents over the weekend, Justice Department lawyers detailed the March 8 arrest and transport from Manhattan to Elizabeth, and the next day he took to New York’s Kennedy International Airport for his move to Louisiana, which he had been holding since.
“Halil remained there until his flight to Louisiana as he was unable to accommodate him in Elizabeth’s detention facility for the long term due to bed bug issues,” the lawyer wrote. They said he was at the facility from 2:20am to 11:30am to 11:30am on March 9th.
The lawyers sought that the legal matters would be addressed by federal judges in New Jersey or Louisiana, not New York. A federal judge in Manhattan has not yet ruled on demand.
Halil’s lawyer opposed to the transfer in the case wrote on Monday that the move to Louisiana was “predetermined and carried out due to inappropriate motives.”
Despite bedbug claims, Elizabeth’s detention accepted at least four individuals for detention from March 6 until last Thursday, and they wrote that Halil himself saw the man being processed for detention while he was there.
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