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Khalil’s lawyers have until April 23 to request ‘relief’ and halt deportation  

President Donald Trump’s administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil, the man who helped lead disruptive pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University over the last year, a U.S. immigration judge ruled Friday.

“The department has met its burden to establish removability by clear and convincing evidence,” Judge Jamee Comans said, according to The New York Times.

Khalil’s case “now moves on to what is known as the ‘relief stage,’ in which his lawyers will be able to argue for his right to stay in the country. If they lose, they can appeal, first to an immigration board and then to a federal court,” the outlet reported.

The judge gave Khalil’s legal team until April 23 to file a request for relief to prevent his deportation, Axios reported.

Addressing the court at the end of the hearing, Khalil said neither “due process rights” nor “fundamental fairness” were present, according to a news release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“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,” he said.

Following the decision, Khalil’s attorney, Marc van der Hout, said in a statement, “Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent,” Axios reported.

“This is not over, and our fight continues,” he said.

In a statement issued Friday, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad called the ruling “dangerous” and “unconstitutional.”

This “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,” the Muslim civil rights group leader stated.

“Although today’s ruling is just the first step in a long legal process, it should be alarming to all Americans who cherish the Bill of Rights and basic freedoms like free speech,” he stated.

He also called the Trump administration’s effort to deport Khalil an “Orwellian” and “lawless attack on free speech.”

Khalil spearheaded disruptive pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last year. This prompted Secretary of State Marco Rubio to invoke a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that authorizes the government to deport a non-citizen if their presence is deemed to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

Judge Comans ruled that the government had fulfilled the evidentiary requirements of the law, which essentially consisted of a memo from Rubio alleging Khalil’s presence in the country facilitated antisemitism, the New York Times reported.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Khalil last month and held him at a detention center in Louisiana, The College Fix previously reported.

“Mahmoud Khalil led a student group that openly declared its mission was to ‘fight for the total eradication of Western civilization’ while taking instructions from terrorist organizations. How much more evidence do people need,” Eyal Yakoby posted on X following outrage over the student’s arrest. Yakoby filed a lawsuit last year against his school, the University of Pennsylvania, alleging it failed to protect students from antisemitism.

Meanwhile, earlier this month in a separate but related case, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz halted deportation proceedings as he evaluates Khalil’s argument that his arrest violated the First Amendment’s free speech protections, Reuters reported.

MORE: Immigration expert says US can deport anti-Israel Columbia student

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Mahmoud Khalil in an interview following his arrest; Fox5/YouTube

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