April 8 (UPI) — Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security have 24 hours to produce evidence showing why Mahmoud Khalil should be deported ahead of a Friday hearing.
Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans on Tuesday ordered the DHS attorneys to produce evidence by Wednesday and said if evidence does not support Khalil’s pending deportation, she would dismiss the case on Friday, the New York Daily News reported.
Comans scheduled the Friday hearing to give Khalil’s legal team time to review the evidence against him if any is provided.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Khalil, 30, while he was at his Columbia University housing apartment in Manhattan in New York City on March 8.
ICE transferred Khalil to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, N.J., and then his current location in Jena, La., where Comans is presiding over his case.
Khalil is a legal permanent resident of the United States but is accused of supporting Hamas, which is a designated foreign terrorist organization, by leading protests at Columbia University.
Khalil is married to a U.S. citizen, Noor Abdalla, who is due to give birth soon to their baby, Khalil’s attorney, Marc Van Der Hout, told the court.
Van Der Hout during Tuesday’s asked Comans to make all of Khalil’s hearings available to the public, but the judge said she more likely would restrict attendance to in-person only inside the courtroom.
Van Der Hout also sought a continuance of the legal proceeding and told Comans they “cannot plead” until seeing the evidence against Khalil.
“We have not received a single document from them,” he said, ABC News reported.
Comans denied the request and ordered Van Der Hout to immediately enter Khalil’s plea to more than a dozen allegations against him.
Van Der Hout entered pleas of “deny” to every allegation against Khalil after Comans read each aloud in court.
Khalil is a native of Syria and a citizen of Algeria and is accused of withholding information from the DHS regarding membership in Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which has organized protests and takeovers of university buildings at Columbia.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said Khalil’s “presence or activities in the United States” would create “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the nation.
Although detained, Khalil wrote an opinion piece that the Columbia University Spectator student newspaper published on Friday.
“We believe that it is the highest honor of our lives to struggle for the cause of Palestinian liberation,” Khalil said in the column.
“History will redeem us,” he said, “while those who were content to wait on the sidelines will forever be remembered for their silence.”
