The arrest of a Palestinian activist who helped organize a war campus in Gaza has raised questions about whether foreign students and green card holders have been saved from being deported from the United States.
Mahmud Khalil was arrested on Saturday by immigration and customs enforcement agents. Homeland security officials and President Donald Trump have indicated that the arrests were directly linked to their role in protests at Columbia University in New York City last spring.
Khalil is being kept at the immigration detention center in Jinna, Louisiana, while he is waiting for the immigration court proceedings, which can eventually lead to deportation. His arrest has criticized that he is being targeted unfairly and illegally, while the federal government has termed it a terrorist sympathetic.
Take a look at what reservations are for foreign students and green card holders and what can happen to Khalil.
Can anyone with a green card be deported?
The Green Card Holder is the person who has a permanent residence in the United States.
Jacqueline Kelly Wooder teaches immigration law at Cornell La School. He said that halal permanent residents usually have many reservations and “should be the safest less than an American citizen.”
But this protection is not absolute. Green card holders can still be deported to commit some crimes, fail to inform immigration officials about the change in address, or to engage in marriage fraud, for example.
Homeland Security Department said Khalil was detained due to Trump’s executive orders, which prohibits enmity.
Trump has argued that protesters confiscated their rights to live in the country by supporting the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls Gaza and has been named by the United States as a terrorist organization.
Khalil and other student leaders at Columbia University have rejected claims of racial discrimination, saying they are part of a wider movement, including Jewish students and groups. But the protest coalition, sometimes also supported the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, who has been named another Islamist organization as a terrorist group.
Khalil has not been convicted of any terrorist activity nor has been accused of any wrongdoing.
But experts say the federal government has a great option to arrest and deport a green card holder in the terrorist fields.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, green card holders do not need to be guilty of anything to be “removable”. He said that if the Secretary for Homeland Security or the Attorney General has a valid basis to believe that he is engaged in terrorist activities or is likely to engage in them, he can be deported.
But, he said, he never saw the matter where the alleged terrorist activity had occurred in the United States, and he questioned whether Khalil’s participation in the protest.
What did Ice say about it why they are arresting him?
One of the major problems in Khalil’s case is that the ice agents told their lawyer when he was arrested.
His lawyer, Amy Greer, said the agent who had taken her into custody at her university -owned house near Colombia, initially claimed to have followed the State Order to dismiss her student visa.
But when Greer told them that Khalil was a permanent resident with a green card, he said he would cancel the documents instead.
What are the next steps in this case?
Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio said in a message posted on the X on Sunday that the administration would “cancel Hamas supporters’ visas and/or green cards in the United States to be deported.”
If a student is in the country on a visa, the State Department has the authority that if the person violates certain conditions, it will be invalidated. For example, it is very common for the Foreign Department to cancel visas for foreign students arrested for drunk driving.
But when it comes to someone who is a legal permanent resident, the immigration judge usually requires to determine if they can be deported.
Jehun said the next step was to receive charging documents from Khalil, stating why he was being detained and why the government wants to remove it, as well as notice to appear in the immigration court.
Generally, it should be received within 72 hours of arrest, and then he will make a preliminary appearance before the immigration judge. Gahon said it could take 10 days to a month.
But he warned that he was now seeing extensive delays in the immigration court system, clients often move to various facilities across the country.
“We have people who have been detained and then they are bounced into a number of different detention facilities,” he said.
Khalil’s lawyers have also filed a lawsuit for challenging his detention. A federal judge in New York City ordered that Khalil be deported while the court considered his case. A hearing is scheduled on Wednesday.
