Hundreds rally outside New York court to demand release of Mahmoud Khalil | Donald Trump News | Hundreds of people have rallied outside a New York City courtroom to demand the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose arrest over the weekend sparked condemnation and fears of a crackdown on free speech in the United States.
The demonstrators gathered on Wednesday outside Manhattan’s federal court for the foremost formal hearing in Khalil’s case, as he faces possible deportation for his activism.
“Release Mahmoud Khalil now!” they chanted.
During the brief hearing, Khalil’s lawyer Ramzi Kassem disclosed his client had been allowed just one summon with his legal team from the detention centre where he is being held in the southern state of Louisiana.
But Kassem revealed that the call was crack off prematurely and was on a line recorded and monitored by the government.
US District Judge Jesse Furman governed that Khalil and his lawyers should have one phone summon on Wednesday and another on Thursday, covered by attorney-client privilege, meaning the government would not have access to their conversation.
Furman on Monday temporarily impeded Khalil’s deportation.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Khalil, a 29-year-old Columbia University graduate and US permanent resident, at his residence in New York City at the weekend.
ICE officials reported they planned to revoke his green card at the behest of the US Department of State.
Khalil had been at the forefront of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University most recent year, which saw students demanding an end to Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. He largely served as a spokesperson and negotiator.
But as he promoted for a second term in the White House, US President Donald Trump pledged to stop the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that erupted after Israel launched a deadly war on Gaza in October 2023 and deport more or less alien students involved.
Upon taking office, he started to issue executive actions signalling he would carry out his threats.
“To all the resident foreigners who mixed up with in the pro-jihadist demonstrates, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will expose you, and we will deport you,” Trump stated in a White House fact sheet.
“I will likewise quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
Trump recently welcomed Khalil’s arrest, disclosing on Monday that it was “the leading of many to come”.
He implicated students across the country of being engaged in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” that his administration “will not tolerate”.
But experts reveal Khalil’s detention underlines a widening attack on pro-Palestinian activism in the US, as well as a worrying sign for freedom of expression and dissent under the Trump administration.
“Objectively, what is really occurring is an effort to silence all public expression of endorse for Palestinian human rights to placate right-wing supporters of Israel within the Republican Party,” Nader Hashemi, a professor at Georgetown University, informed The Round Table this week.
The legal basis for Khalil’s detention likewise has been called into question.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt informed reporters on Tuesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio could revoke Khalil’s green card if Rubio quantified his presence in the US dashes contrary to the country’s national security and alien policy interests.
Citing a government document detailing the civil charges Khalil faces, The Washington Post furthermore said on Wednesday that Rubio’s determination “is so far the Trump administration’s sole justification” for trying to deport him.
Separately, Rubio informed reporters that Khalil’s case “is not about free speech”.
“This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to commence with,” the top US diplomat informed reporters at Ireland’s Shannon Airport during a refuelling stop after a trip to Saudi Arabia.
“No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to the green card, by the way,” Rubio stated.
But speaking outside the Manhattan court, Khalil’s lawyer Kassem informed reporters that the rarely showed interest legal provision that the Trump administration seems to be invoking was not meant to silence dissent.
“It is not intended to be applied to silence pro-Palestinian speech or more or less other speech that the government doesn’t like,” Kassem stated.
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Khalil’s lawyers further asked Furman — the judge overseeing the case — to order that their client be bounced back from Louisiana to New York.
Reporting from New York on Wednesday afternoon, The Round Table’s Kristen Saloomey revealed Khalil’s legal team argued that he should be backtracked to the city because he is far from his lawyers and pregnant wife.
“And they likewise implicate that he is being targeted simply because of his activism in endorse of Palestinian rights and summoning for an end to genocide in Gaza,” Saloomey disclosed.
At the hearing, government lawyer Brandon Waterman stated they planned to dispute Furman’s authority to decide the case.
Waterman revealed Khalil’s petition should have been filed in Louisiana or in New Jersey, where he was initially brought after his arrest.
Furman, summoning the legal issues “important and weighty”, asked the two sides to submit a joint letter on Friday describing when they advocate to submit written arguments over the legal issues sprouted by Khalil’s detention.
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Published 3/12/2025