Mahmoud Khalil's legal team urges appeals court to affirm immigration detention release
New York, New York - Legal representatives for Mahmoud Khalil are calling on a federal appeals court to affirm the Palestinian rights activist's release from US immigration detention.
"The United States government arrested Petitioner, Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident with a U.S. citizen spouse (and, now, child) and detained him more than a thousand miles from counsel and family for over one hundred days by invoking an unprecedented application of an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act ('INA') to punish him for his constitutionally protected advocacy for Palestinian human rights," reads a brief filed on Wednesday in the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
"As the district court held in multiple lengthy opinions and as explained below, the federal courts have the jurisdiction – and duty – to check executive conduct when it violates constitutional rights by seeking to censor speech through the abuse of immigration enforcement authority. The Court should affirm the district court's carefully considered judgments," the filing argues.
Khalil made international headlines after his March 8 warrantless arrest in New York City and subsequent transfer to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena.
The recent Columbia University graduate student was targeted by the Trump administration for deportation due to his activism, becoming a symbol of the student movement for Palestinian liberation.
A federal judge in New Jersey ordered Khalil's release on bail on June 20, ruling he "is not a danger to the community. Period, full stop."
Mahmoud Khalil vows not to be "intimidated into silence"
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals in July rejected a Trump administration bid to suspend Khalil's release on bail, but the government has continued its efforts to re-detain him.
"The government's arguments are meritless and should be rejected," Bobby Hodgson, assistant legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. "The Trump administration had no legitimate reason to detain Mahmoud Khalil and the district court rightly held that its efforts to remove him were likely unconstitutional."
"Ideas are not illegal, and no administration should ever be able to weaponize immigration law or unilaterally incarcerate people for expressing opinions with which they disagree."
Khalil, meanwhile, was back in Washington DC on Wednesday, urging US lawmakers to end military aid and weapons transfers to Israel.
"I'm here in Washington DC today because I refuse to be intimidated into silence," he said during a Block the Bombs press conference on Capitol Hill.
"As all of us watch a continuing genocide unfold in the palm of our hands, I will never be silent to advocate for my people."
Cover photo: STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP