‘Unprecedented,’ ‘Ugly,’ ‘McCarthyism’: Mahmoud Khalil’s Lawyers Fight His Detention in Court

Mahmoud Khalil had his first day in court on Wednesday morning, to challenge his detention by the Trump administration over his politically protected speech. Khalil wasn't in attendance—he's still in a private detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, where immigration authorities hurried him shortly after he was taken into custody at his home in Columbia University housing Saturday.

Instead, Khalil was represented in court by a host of lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, CUNY Law School, the Legal Aid Society, the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the Dratel and Lewis law firm. Sitting opposite them were two Justice Department attorneys willing to be the names and faces behind the argument that the government should be able to seize and deport legal permanent residents if the current administration disagrees with their speech: Jeffrey Oestericher and Brandon Matthew Waterman.

Department of Homeland Security agents approached Khalil at around 8:30 p.m. last Saturday and took him into custody. His lawyer, Amy Greer, filed a habeas corpus petition that night, seven hours later, at 4:41 a.m. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's online detainee locator listed Khalil as still in New York City four hours after that, according to Khalil's legal team. That should make the court of Judge Jesse Furman, in the Southern District of New York, the proper place for Khalil's proceedings. But today in court, Waterman told Judge Furman that in fact the government took Khalil out of New York City "no later than 3:20 Sunday morning," and that for this reason the court has no jurisdiction.