U.S. can deport pro-Hamas Columbia protest organizer, judge rules

Pro-Hamas protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, can be lawfully deported, an immigration judge ruled Friday. Louisiana-based Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans said Khalil’s presence in the United States could pose foreign policy and national security risks, the Associated Press reported.

Immigration agents arrested Khalil in March as part of a government push against anti-Semitism. Khalil was one of the chief negotiators representing pro-Hamas student groups during the April 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia, according to court documents. He is married to an American citizen and holds a green card that makes him a permanent resident of the United States. The government planned to revoke his green card, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Will Khalil be deported immediately? Khalil will appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals in the next few weeks, his lawyer told a federal judge, according to the Associated Press. Nothing will happen quickly, the lawyer said.

How are other recent actions of the Trump administration faring in court? A federal judge on Friday blocked the U.S. Department of Agriculture from terminating $3 million in funding to Maine schools. The USDA had pulled the funding because the state allowed male athletes to compete in girls’ sports.

The judge acknowledged that differing Title IX interpretations about people who identify as transgender are at the center of the ongoing tussle between Maine and the Trump administration, but did not weigh in on the issue.

Dig deeper: Read my report on how the Justice Department terminated funding to Maine’s corrections department after it housed a violent male prisoner in a women’s facility.