Feds to continue to detain Columbia protester, claiming he lied on his green card application

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration said Friday that it will continue to detain Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil, after a federal judge ruled that he can’t be held based on the U.S. secretary of state’s determination that he could harm American foreign policy.

The government said in a filing that it is instead holding Khalil, a legal U.S. resident, at an immigration lockup on allegations that he lied on his green card application.

In its filing Friday, the government argued that U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz never said it would be “unlawful” to hold Khalil on those grounds.

In his Wednesday ruling, the New Jersey judge found it “overwhelmingly likely” that the government would not hold Khalil solely on the allegation of errors in his green card application. He also determined that Khalil had shown his continued detention was causing irreparable harm to his career, his family and his free speech rights.

Khalil has disputed that he wasn’t forthcoming on the application, and his lawyers have argued that legal permanent residents are virtually never detained for such reasons.

Khalil maintains, among other things, that he was never employed by or served as an “officer” of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, as the administration claims, but completed an internship approved by the university as part of his graduate studies.

In their own letter to Farbiarz, Khalil’s lawyers said he had satisfied all of the court’s requirements to go free and that the government’s lawyers missed a Friday morning deadline to challenge the judge’s Wednesday ruling.

“The deadline has come and gone and Mahmoud Khalil must be released immediately,” his lawyers said in a statement provided by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is among the groups representing him. “Anything further is an attempt to prolong his unconstitutional, arbitrary, and cruel detention.”

The federal court clerk’s office said Friday that the judge will respond to each side’s arguments in a future filing.

Earlier Friday, the ACLU released a video featuring actors Mark Ruffalo, Mahershala Ali and other celebrity fathers reading a letter Khalil wrote to his newborn son from jail ahead of his first Father’s Day on Sunday.

“One day you might ask why people are punished for standing up for Palestine,” read Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. “These are hard questions, but I hope our story shows you this: The world needs more courage, not less. It needs people who choose justice over convenience.”

Khalil was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

His was the first arrest under President Donald Trump’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy.

Khalil’s lawyers say the Trump administration is simply trying to crack down on free speech.

Khalil isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The international affairs graduate student served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists.

He wasn’t among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics.

The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic.