#ICE Secretly Hauled #MahmoudKhalil to #Louisiana as Retaliation, Lawyers Allege
By moving the campus #activist to a new jurisdiction, ICE disrupted court proceedings and limited his legal access, his attorneys say.
by Jonah Valdez, March 11 2025,
"Mahmoud Khalil’s wife watched as agents from the Department of Homeland Security handcuffed her husband and whisked him away from their New York City apartment in an unmarked vehicle on Saturday evening.
Agents ignored the pleas of Khalil’s wife who tried to show them legal papers proving her husband was a green card holder. They wouldn’t heed her requests to share where they were taking him, according to court filings. Eventually, one of the agents offered a terse response: Check the local immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan.
"By next morning, however, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee locator indicated Khalil was no longer in New York. Instead, it showed him at the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. When Khalil’s wife visited the jail, she was turned away.
"Without warning to Khalil’s wife or his immigration attorney Amy Greer, who the same morning had filed a petition to challenge her client’s arrest as a violation of his First Amendment free speech rights, ICE agents had transferred Khalil to a different facility. This time, they moved him thousands of miles south of his New York home to a facility in Louisiana. It wasn’t until Monday morning that Khalil’s exact whereabouts were updated in the ICE online system: the #LaSalleDetentionFacility in #JenaLouisiana, a #PrivateJail operated by the #GEOGroup.
"Attorneys for Khalil allege the move from the New York metropolitan area to Louisiana was a '#RetaliatoryTransfer' intended to restrict his access and to lawyers and family, and position what has grown into a closely watched #FirstAmendment case in a jurisdiction more friendly to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies.
"Three days after his detention, Khalil still has not been charged with a crime. The Department of Homeland Security has said it arrested Khalil, a lead negotiator for Palestine solidarity protesters at Columbia, for having “led activities aligned to Hamas.” President Donald Trump, who campaigned on deporting pro-Palestinian protesters, pledged that Khalil’s arrest is 'the first arrest of many to come' and that his administration would continue to target for deportations 'more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.'
"Although a Manhattan federal court ordered a temporary halt preventing the Trump administration from immediately deporting Khalil, attorneys remain concerned for his well-being and ability to access proper legal counsel. In a motion filed Monday evening by attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility project at the City University of New York School of Law, attorneys seek to reverse the ICE decision and to transfer Khalil back to New York."
Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2025/03/11/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-ice-louisiana/
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/7uhSa
#CharacteristicsOfFascism #FloodingTheZone #ShockAndAwe #FirstAmendment #USPol #Fascism #Authoritarianism #FreeSpeech #FreePalestine #RightToProtest #Censorship #ColumbiaUniversity #Palestinian #Protests #FreeKhalil #DHS #DepartmentOfHomelandSecurity #CenterForConstitutionalRights #TrumpRegime #HumanRightsAreNeverWrong #PrivatePrisons #IndefiniteDetention
