LAST Friday, immigration judge Jamee Comans ruled in Louisiana that the Trump administration can deport Columbia University graduate and activist Mahmoud Khalil. 

This decision was based solely on a short memo written by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in which he claims that Khalil’s presence “has potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest.”

According to Rubio, the State Department’s claims regarding Khalil are “regarding the participation and roles of and Khalil in anti-semitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States,” referring to his participation in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, in which students peacefully demonstrated on their campus last spring in an attempt push their administration to divest from Israeli genocide. 

Rubio’s memo claims that Khalil’s continued presence in the US, as well as another individual whose name is redacted, “undermine US policy to combat anti-semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.”

At the end of the court hearing, Khalil addressed the court, saying “I would like to quote what you said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process, rights and fundamental fairness. Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process.

“This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family,” Khalil continued. “I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me are afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”

Khalil is a protagonist in the recently-released documentary “The Encampments,” featured for his role in leading negotiations between student protesters and the Columbia administration with the goal of winning the institution’s divestment for Israel. At one point in the documentary, which shows the events of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, a journalist asked Khalil what he would do if he was deported for his activism. 

“I will live,” Khalil responded. “The Palestinian people have been under occupation, ethnic cleansing, and all sorts of crimes since 1948,” Khalil, who himself is Palestinian, said. “And we prevailed. We will prevail, no matter what will happen.” 

Khalil’s legal team will continue to fight for his release. There are two main paths open to Khalil following Comans’s ruling: through federal district court in New Jersey, arguing for Khalil’s release on free speech grounds, and in immigration court, where Khalil could apply for asylum. 

“This is not over, and our fight continues,” said one of Khalil’s lawyers, Marc van der Hout, founding partner of Van Der Hout, LLP. “If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone over any issue the Trump administration dislikes.”

Comans’s ruling was issued in Jena, Louisiana, the remote immigration detention centre where Khalil is held. In court on Friday, one of Khalil’s supporters read a statement by his wife, Noor Abdalla, who is set to give birth to the couple’s first child soon. Abdalla has expressed worry that her husband will not be able to witness the birth. Abdalla’s statement, read on April 11, called Comans’s ruling “a devastating blow to our family” as well as “an indictment of our country’s immigration system and does not reflect truth, justice, or the will of the American people.”

Palestine solidarity organisations continued to express their support for Khalil in the wake of this ruling. The Palestinian Youth Movement called the ruling “unsurprising” given the escalating attacks of the Trump administration against pro-Palestine speech. PYM argues that Khalil and other students are seen as “threats” by Trump because “in real-time, millions of people have been and continue to be moved on Palestine, across the entire political spectrum.”

This article appeared on People’s Dispatch.