US immigration judge allows Trump administration to move forward with deportation of Mahmoud Khalil
A US immigration judge in Louisiana has ruled that the Trump administration can proceed with the deportation of Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested in New York City last month, Reuters reports.
We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
Key events
Donald Trump has issued a national security memo directing the secretary of defense and other cabinet officials to launch a military mission aimed at “sealing the southern border of the United States and repelling invasions”.
The memo, which is addressed to the secretaries of defense, interior, agriculture and homeland security, directs the interior department to allow the defense department to construct military installations and perform other military activities on the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60-ft wide strip of land along the US side of the US-Mexico border.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from freezing federal funds for the state of Maine in response to the state’s policies allowing transgender girls to compete in school sports.
In a 70-page order, US district judge John A Woodcock ordered the US Department of Agriculture to “immediately unfreeze and release to the state of Maine any federal funding that they have frozen or failed or refused to pay because of the State’s alleged failure to comply with the requirements of Title IX”.
Last week, agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins sent a letter to Maine governor Janet Mills “freezing Maine’s federal funds for certain administrative and technological functions in schools”, saying the state had violated the Trump-administration’s Title IX guidance on transgender students.
DoJ terminates environmental racism case against majority-Black community in Alabama
Nina Lakhani
Trump’s justice department has upended a historic civil rights case into environmental racism against a majority-Black community in Alabama, on the grounds that it violates an executive order banning federal agencies from pursuing programs or initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), including those relating to environmental justice.
The DoJ announced on Friday that it is terminating the environmental justice settlement deal reached in 2023, requiring Alabama’s health agencies to provide Lowndes county residents with adequate sanitation and wastewater disposal facilities – after decades of unlawful and discriminatory neglect which had led to multiple generations dealing with raw sewage, infectious diseases and other public health hazards.
“The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” said assistant attorney general Harmeet K Dhillon of the justice department’s civil rights division. “President Trump made it clear: Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria.”
In fact, environmental justice is about how ecological hazards and deadly pollutants like lead, emissions from heavy manufacturing plants and highways are disproportionately located in communities of color, on Indigenous lands and low-income neighborhoods. Environmental justice work is not about DEI, it is about tackling systemic racism and other structural inequalities that have done untold health harms to Black, brown and Indigenous communities in the US.
The Social Security Administration will transition all of its public communication exclusively to X, the Elon Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Facing significant staffing cuts, the administration will cease issuing press releases or communicating with journalists.
“The agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public,” Linda Kerr-Davis, SSA midwest-west regional commissioner told employees in a call Thursday, according to Federal News Network (FNN). “If you’re used to getting press releases and Dear Colleague letters, you might want to subscribe to the official SSA X account, so you can stay up to date with agency news.”
“I know this probably sounds very foreign to you – it did to me as well – and not what we are used to, but we are in different times now,” she added.
The decision comes as federal agencies have significantly reduced their staffing, following the directives of the Musk-led “department of government efficiency”, and as the Trump administration is limiting its contact with reporters. In February, the administration barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office over the outlets decision to use the term “Gulf of Mexico” instead of Trump’s preferred “Gulf of America”. The Associated Press sued to regain access to the White House press pool and a federal judge ruled in its favor this week.
A federal judge has ruled in favor of the Trump administration, allowing immigration agents to continue entering houses of worship for now.
US district judge Dabney Friedrich declined to grant a preliminary injunction to a coalition of Christian and Jewish groups that had sued over a new Department of Homeland Security policy allowing agents access to “sensitive areas” like schools and churches. The judge found that the groups lack standing since few immigration enforcement actions have occurred at houses of worship to date.
In related news, Los Angeles unified school district superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, has confirmed that immigration officials attempted to enter two Los Angeles elementary schools this week:
Khalil will appeal case, says attorney
Mahmoud Khalil will appeal his case to the board of immigration appeals, his attorney said at a New Jersey hearing.
One of Khalil’s attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout, told a federal judge that Khalil will file the appeal after the immigration judge who ruled him ‘removable’ today issues the final written ruling. Van Der Hout added that Khalil’s legal team may also pursue an asylum case.
“So nothing is going to happen quickly in the immigration proceeding even though she’s found him removable on the foreign policy grounds,” he said.
As news of an immigration judge’s ruling on Mahmoud Khalil’s case reverberates around the country, here are a few statements advocacy groups are releasing in response.
Amnesty International USA: “This decision by the court sends a painfully chilling message to anyone living in the United States: under the Trump administration, free speech is only reserved for the few and not for all,” said Justin Mazzola, deputy director of research. “What the Trump administration has done to Mahmoud Khalil and too many other students across the country is to leverage the mass deportation machine in service of silencing dissent at home and crushing advocacy to stop the ongoing war crimes and genocide by Israel against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. At the same time, the US is continuing to provide weapons to the Israeli government.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations: “This Louisiana immigration judge’s dangerous, unconstitutional ruling allowing the deportation of a legal permanent resident because the current administration wants to punish him for exercising his first amendment right to criticize the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza must not stand,” said national executive director Nihad Awad. “We are confident that federal courts will see through the Trump administration’s lawless attack on free speech and that the movement against the Israeli government’s genocide will continue to grow in our nation, despite these Orwellian attempts to suppress free speech.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression: “Allowing a single government official sweeping and nearly unchecked power to pick and choose individuals to deport based on beliefs alone, without alleging a single crime, crosses a line that should never be crossed in a free society,” said legal director Will Creeley. “The only ‘crime’ the government has offered was that Mahmoud Khalil expressed a disfavored political opinion. If that’s a crime in America, every single one of us is guilty.”
In other immigration-related news, the Department of Homeland Security has ended temporary protected status for about 9,000 Afghans living in the United States.
In a statement released today, the agency said secretary Kristi Noem had decided to terminate the protected status, usually granted to people from countries affected by war or disasters, because she believed the conditions in Afghanistan no longer met that definition.
Of the tens of thousands of Afghans who fled after the Taliban takeover in 2021, about 9,000 have TPS (while others may have asylum or humanitarian parole), the Associated Press reports, citing a December congressional research service report.
As we continue to await the latest on Mahmoud Khalil’s case, Wall Street has closed for the day after a chaotic week.
US stocks were up Friday, after a day of gains and losses. The S&P gained 1.8%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 619 points and the Nasdaq composite gained 2.1%.
At a press conference earlier in the day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to sooth investors’ fears about the economic impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs: “Trust in President Trump, he knows what he’s doing,” she said.
Here are my colleagues Callum Jones and Helen Davidson with more:
Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team is expected to give a press conference at 5.30pm ET. We’ll bring you the latest from that – and from another hearing in Khalil’s case that’s expected to begin in a New Jersey court shortly.
In the meantime, here are two letters that Khalil and his wife, 28-year-old US citizen Noor Abdalla, wrote to one another in the Guardian over the past month:
Noor Abdalla, Mahmoud Khalil’s wife, has released a statement on her husband’s case:
“Today’s decision feels like a devastating blow to our family. No person should be deemed ‘removable’ from their home for speaking out against the killing of Palestinian families, doctors and journalists. Today, in court, the government reiterated the same baseless, racist claims about my husband that we have heard time and again in attempts to smear those calling for an end to Israel’s brutal genocide in Gaza. My husband is a political prisoner who is being deprived of his rights because he believes Palestinians deserve equal dignity and freedom. There is nothing the government can say about my husband that can silence this truth. This ruling is an indictment of our country’s immigration system and does not reflect truth, justice or the will of the American people. In less than a month, Mahmoud and I will welcome our first child. Until we are reunited, I will not stop advocating for my husband’s safe return home.”
The statement was shared by Khalil’s support team at a press conference outside the detention center where he is being held.
A number of faith leaders are now speaking outside the detention center where Mahmoud Khalil is detained.
“Let us not forget that abducting people, isolating them from their families and silencing their voices is the hallmark of oppression” said one Jewish leader, who did not identify himself. “Even pharaohs fell when they defied justice.”
“I’m here to speak particularly to Christians,” said a campus minister, who only identified herself as Liv, before detailing the story of Jesus Christ, born in Palestine and killed by “state-sanctioned violence”.
“What we did hear today was circle around. What we will continue to do for as long as it takes, we’ll circle around for release, for the end of genocide, for the end of colonization, for a free Palestine, for the release of all political prisoners,” said Rev Sarah Greene, a Unitarian Universalist community minister. “We will not stop until every inch, I’m so serious, every inch of our imagination, of how free we could be, is realized.”
Support team shares statement to court from Khalil
According to his support team, at the end of his hearing, Mahmoud Khalil shared the following statement with the immigration court:
“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. Clearly what we witnessed today neither of these principles were present – today or in this whole process. This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me is afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months,” Khalil said.
Mahmoud Khalil’s support team calls decision ‘as unjust as it is alarming’
Speaking at a press conference outside a Louisiana detention center, Mahmoud Khalil’s support team has issued a statement on an immigration judge’s ruling that he is “removable”.
“Today an immigration judge ruled that Mahmoud can be removed from this country. A decision as unjust as it is alarming. Despite the government’s failure to prove that Mahmoud broke any law, the court has decided that lawful permanent resident’s can have their status revoked for pro-Palestine advocacy. This is a blatant violation of the first amendment and a dangerous precedent for anyone who believes in free speech and political expression. But this decision should not pacify you, it should embolden and encourage you.
“Those who know Mahmoud know him for his fierce commitment to justice and his refusal to back down from even the steepest of challenges. It is Mahmoud’s fighting spirit that we must embrace in the following days. While his deportation would devastate his wife and their soon-to-be-born child, it would also intimidate all who dare to speak for Palestinian liberation.
“In recent weeks, this repression has only intensified, with the visas of students presumed to be pro-Palestine being revoked daily, we must not give in to this chilling effect.”
Here’s more on the news that a federal judge has ruled the Trump administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil from my colleague Oliver Laughland in Jena, Louisiana:
Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer, is eligible to be deported from the United States, an immigration judge ruled on Friday during a contentious hearing at a remote court in central Louisiana.
The decision sides with the Trump administration’s claim that a short memo written by secretary of state Marco Rubio, which stated Khalil’s “beliefs and associations” were counter to foreign policy interests, is sufficient evidence to remove a lawful permanent resident from the United States. The undated memo, the main piece of evidence submitted by the government, contained no allegations of criminal conduct.
During a tense hearing on Friday afternoon, Khalil’s attorneys made an array of unsuccessful arguments attempting to both delay a ruling on his eligibility for removal and to terminate proceedings entirely. They argued the broad allegations contained in Rubio’s memo gave them a right to directly cross-examine him.
Khalil held prayer beads as three attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security presented arguments for his removal.
Judge Jamee Comans ruled that Rubio’s determination was “presumptive and sufficient evidence” and that she had no power to rule on concerns over free speech.
