US alleges Columbia University student covered up his work for UNRWA
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The case has drawn attention as a test of free speech rights, with supporters of Mr Mahmoud Khalil saying he was targeted for publicly disagreeing with US policy on Israel.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON – The US government has alleged that Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian demonstrator Mahmoud Khalil withheld that he worked for a United Nations Palestinian relief agency in his visa application, saying that should be grounds for deportation.
The UN agency known as UNRWA provides food and healthcare to Palestinian refugees and has become a flashpoint in the Israeli war in Gaza.
Israel contends that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in Hamas' attack
The administration of US President Donald Trump on March 8 detained Mr Khalil, a prominent figure in the pro-Palestinian campus protests that rocked the New York City campus in 2024, and sent him to Louisiana in an attempt to remove him from the country.
The case has drawn attention as a test of free speech rights, with supporters of Mr Khalil saying he was targeted for publicly disagreeing with US policy on Israel and its occupation of Gaza. Mr Khalil has called himself a political prisoner.
The US alleges Mr Khalil's presence or activities in the country would have serious foreign policy consequences.
A judge has ordered Mr Khalil not to be deported
Mr Khalil, a native of Syria and citizen of Algeria, entered the US on a student visa in 2022 and later filed to become a permanent resident in 2024.
In a court brief dated March 23, the US government outlined its arguments for keeping Mr Khalil in custody while his removal proceedings continue, arguing first that the US District Court in New Jersey, where the habeas case is being heard, lacked jurisdiction.
The brief also says Mr Khalil "withheld membership in certain organisations", which should be grounds for his deportation.
It references a March 17 document in his deportation case that informed Mr Khalil he could be removed because he failed to disclose that he was a political officer of UNRWA in 2023.
The UN said in August an investigation found nine of the agency's 32,000 staff may have been involved in the Oct 7 attacks.
The US court notice also accuses Mr Khalil of leaving off his visa application that he worked for the Syria office in the British Embassy in Beirut and that he was a member of the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
Attorneys for Mr Khalil did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One attorney, Mr Ramie Kassem, a co-director of legal clinic Clear, was quoted in The New York Times as saying the new deportation grounds were "patently weak and pretextual".
"That the government scrambled to add them at the 11th hour only highlights how its motivation from the start was to retaliate against Mr Khalil for his protected speech in support of Palestinian rights and lives," Mr Kassem said, according to The Times. REUTERS
