US judge gives government a day to present evidence against Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil

An immigration judge gives the US government a day to show its evidence that Columbia University pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil should be deported and says she will rule on the government’s case on Friday, a month after he was arrested in New York and transferred 1,200 miles to a rural Louisiana jail.

“If he’s not removable, I’m going to be terminating this case on Friday,” Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans says during a hearing at the LaSalle Immigration Court in Jena, Louisiana.

If the government’s deportation case is terminated at the hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon, Khalil, 30, is free under immigration law. The government cannot challenge the termination, but if the judge terminates the case without prejudice it can attempt to file the removal case again.

Khalil sat at a table in the courtroom, wrapping prayer beads around his right hand, as he listened to his attorney Marc Van Der Hout appear remotely from California on a nearby screen to tell the court he had not received a single document of the government’s evidence.

“There’s nothing more important to this court than Mr. Khalil’s due process rights,” Comans tells Van Der Hout after he asked for more time to review the government’s evidence. “I’m also not going to keep Mr. Khalil detained while attorneys go back and forth about documents.”

Department of Homeland Security lawyers tells Comans they will provide the evidence by her 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline.