JENA, Louisiana: A month after Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was picked up by immigration agents in New York and transferred 1,200 miles to a detention center in rural Louisiana, an immigration judge on Tuesday gave the government a day to provide evidence he should be deported and said she would rule on that question on Friday.
“If he’s not removable I’m going to be terminating this case on Friday,” Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans said during a hearing at the LaSalle Immigration Court in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil was in the courtroom at a table where he could see his attorney Marc Van Der Hout, appearing remotely from California, on a nearby screen.
Department of Homeland Security lawyers told Comans they would provide the evidence by her 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline.

President Donald Trump’s administration says it has revoked Khalil’s status as a lawful permanent resident under a 1952 law allowing the deportation of any immigrant whose presence in the country the secretary of state deems harmful to US foreign policy.
The US government also has said the pro-Palestinian demonstrator should be forced from the country because he withheld that he worked for a United Nations Palestinian relief agency in his visa application, and also left off the application that he worked for the Syria office in the British embassy in Beirut and that he was a member of the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Comans read the government’s allegations, and Van Der Hout responded with “deny” to each.
The immigration case is separate from a challenge to the legality of his March arrest, known as a habeas corpus petition. A different judge hearing Khalil’s habeas petition has ruled that he must remain in the United States for now.
Since Khalil’s arrest Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said he has revoked the visas of hundreds of foreign students. The Trump administration says college protests against US military support for Israel have included harassment of Jewish students.
Student protest organizers, including some Jewish groups, say criticism of Israel is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism.
Khalil, a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Syria, has called himself a political prisoner. His lawyers have argued the Trump administration improperly targeted him for his political views in violation of his right to free speech guaranteed by the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
Khalil’s wife, US citizen Noor Abdalla, is due to give birth to their first child “imminently,” Khalil’s lawyers said in a court filing on Friday. She has not been able to travel to Louisiana to visit him due to her pregnancy. She watched on Tuesday via a court video link.

WASHINGTON: American families of victims of the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel filed a lawsuit on Monday against a prominent Palestinian-American businessman, Bashar Masri, charging that he provided assistance in constructing infrastructure that allowed Hamas militants to carry out their cross-border rampage. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for Washington, D.C., is thought to be the first case of a US citizen being accused of providing major support for the attacks that triggered a wider Middle East conflict and upended the region.
Masri’s office called the lawsuit “baseless.”
According to a statement announcing the lawsuit, properties Masri owned, developed and controlled, including two luxury hotels and the leading industrial zone in Gaza – the Gaza Industrial Estate — “concealed tunnels underneath them, and had tunnel entrances accessible from within the properties, which Hamas used in terrorist operations before, on and after October 7th.”

“Defendants facilitated the construction and concealment of those tunnels and even built above-ground solar panel installations that they then used to supply Hamas with electricity to the tunnels,” it said. The October 7 attacks killed some 1,200 Israelis, including more than 40 Americans, and prompted Israeli retaliation against Gaza that has since killed more than 50,000 Palestinians.
The lawsuit, which targets Masri and his companies, was filed on behalf of nearly 200 American plaintiffs, including survivors and relatives of victims.
“Our goal is to expose those who have aided and abetted Hamas and to try and bring accountability to individuals and companies that have presented a legitimate and moderate image to the Western world but have actively and knowingly helped Hamas,” Lee Wolosky of the Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP law firm, lead attorney representing the plaintiffs, said in the statement.
It said GIE was originally established with the help of US taxpayer funding via the US Agency for International Development to promote economic growth in the region.
It said of that “as a result of defendants’ deception,” Hamas’ tunnel network was built with the help of infrastructure and energy projects financed by international institutions, including the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.
Masri’s office called the allegations against him and his businesses false and said he would seek their dismissal in court. It said Masri had been involved in development and humanitarian work for the past decades and “unequivocally opposes violence of any kind.”
“Neither he nor those entities have ever engaged in unlawful activity or provided support for violence and militancy,” it said in a statement.
Doing any big projects in Gaza prior to the war would have required tacit approval by, and some level of cooperation with, the Hamas authorities. The group built its extensive tunnel network across practically the entire territory, including under private homes and businesses.
A March 10 article in the Jerusalem Post cited unnamed diplomatic sources as saying that Masri had served as a close adviser to Adam Boehler, US President Donald Trump’s envoy seeking release of hostages held in Gaza, and had flown on Boehler’s private jet as he shuttled across the region.
It called Masri “a seasoned entrepreneur” who “shares a business-minded approach with Trump, making him a natural fit in the administration’s economic vision for the region.”
The State Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment when asked about the newspaper report.
In a Reuters interview in October 2020, when he was 59, Masri spoke in favor of Gulf Arab ties with Israel, condemned by Palestinian leaders, saying they could be an opportunity to apply fresh pressure to halt Jewish settlement in occupied land.
When speaking to Reuters in 2020, Masri said Palestinians must not give up hope. “Our enemies want us to give up hope. If we give up hope, they have exactly what they want, and there will be no Palestine, and no Palestinian people,” he said.