Oct. 21 (UPI) — Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil must wait several days or weeks for a federal appellate court to decide whether the federal government can detain him while he appeals a deportation order.
Khalil and his legal team argued against his continued detainment before the appellate court on Tuesday after a federal district court ruled the federal government must release him from custody while he appeals his deportation order.
“They know they don’t have a case against me,” Khalil told media after Tuesday’s hearing.
“We will keep fighting the legal fight until the end,” he added. “And we are fairly confident that we will prevail at the end.”
Khalil accused the Trump administration of “being cruel” and trying to “break me.”
“The government tried to put me in prison and disappear me,” he said. “The legal system vindicated me.”
Khalil is a citizen of Syria, but his wife and recently born child are U.S. citizens.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested him on March 8 outside a Columbia University housing facility.
He was held at a Louisiana detention center until June, when a judge ordered his release pending the outcome of his immigration case, which the Trump administration appealed.
“The Trump administration is still trying to bring me back to detention and block the federal court in New Jersey from reviewing my case,” Khalil said Tuesday in an American Civil Liberties Union news release.
The ACLU is among organizations representing Khalil and that accuse the Trump administration of targeting pro-Palestinian students at Columbia and elsewhere with deportation to silence them in violation of the First Amendment.
The ACLU says Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrongfully invoked foreign policy as grounds for deporting Khalil and others who express support for Hamas and other designated foreign terrorist organizations that seek the destruction of the United States and its allies, including Israel.
An immigration judge on Sept. 17 ruled the former Columbia University graduate student must be deported to either Algeria or Syria and denied Khalil’s motion to stop his deportation.
The judge ruled Khalil willfully omitted his work on behalf of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, which on Aug. 5, 2024, acknowledged 19 of its staffers were accused of participating in the Oct.7, 2023, attack on Israel.
UNRWA officials fired nine of the 19 accused workers for their alleged participation in the attack that killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and kidnapped 250, who were held as hostages.
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