US judge extends detention of pro-Palestinian protest leader

NEW YORK: Pro-Palestinian student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil remained in US detention Friday despite an expected release, his lawyer said, following reported accusations of inaccuracies in his permanent residency application.

US District Judge Michael Fabiarz had issued an order Wednesday that the government could not detain or deport Khalil, a legal permanent resident, based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s assertions that his presence on US soil posed a national security threat.

The order gave the government until Friday to release Khalil.

But by Friday afternoon, the Trump administration “represented that the Petitioner is being detained on another, second charge,” the judge wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security has provided the court with press clippings from various American tabloids suggesting Khalil, who is married to a US citizen, had failed to disclose certain information about his work or involvement in a campaign to boycott Israel when applying for his permanent resident green card, ABC News reported.

“The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father’s Day as a family,” Khalil attorney Amy Greer said in a statement, referring to the US holiday observed on Sunday.

“Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in ICE detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians. It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”

Since his March 8 arrest by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Khalil has become a symbol of President Donald Trump’s willingness to stifle pro-Palestinian student activism against the Gaza war, in the name of curbing anti-Semitism.

At the time a graduate student at New York’s Columbia University, Khalil was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Authorities transferred Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from his home in New York to a detention center in Louisiana, pending deportation.

His wife Noor Abdalla, a Michigan-born dentist, gave birth to their son while Khalil was in detention.