When Mahmoud Khalil, who helped lead pro-Palestinian demonstrations while a Columbia University student, was detained this month, the Trump administration argued he should be deported to help prevent the spread of antisemitism, invoking a rarely used law.
Lawyers for Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident who is being detained in Louisiana, quickly responded that the administration was retaliating against their client for his constitutionally protected speech criticizing Israel and promoting Palestinian rights.
Last week, the government quietly added new accusations to its case against Mr. Khalil, saying that he had willfully failed to disclose his membership in several organizations, including a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, when he applied to become a permanent U.S. resident last March. It said he also failed to disclose work he did for the British government after 2022.
The Trump administration appears to be using the new allegations in part to sidestep the First Amendment issues raised by Mr. Khalil’s case. On Sunday, in a filing opposing his release, Justice Department lawyers argued that the new allegations reduced the importance of concerns about Mr. Khalil’s right to free speech.
“Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring,” they wrote. Given the new allegations, they added, there was an “independent basis” for his deportation.
“The new deportation grounds are patently weak and pretextual,” said one of Mr. Khalil’s lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, a co-director of CLEAR, a legal clinic at the City University of New York. “That the government scrambled to add them at the 11th hour only highlights how its motivation from the start was to retaliate against Mr. Khalil for his protected speech in support of Palestinian rights and lives.”
