April 25 (UPI) — The Trump administration told a court Thursday that it did not have a warrant when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, but argued it did not need one as agents judged the U.S. permanent legal resident to be a flight risk.
In a filing, the government stated that generally a warrant of arrest must be obtained, but that officers had “exigent circumstances to conduct the warrantless arrest” of Khalil.
The government lawyers said Khalil was not carrying his alien registration receipt card as required, “refused to cooperate with the agents” and had “verbally informed the agents that he was going to leave the scene.”
“Given the agents’ interaction with the respondent and the information received regarding removability … the agents had reason to believe that the respondent was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained,” the lawyers said in the filing. “Thus, the exception to the warrant requirement applied and the agents were within lawful authority to arrest the respondent.”
Khalil, who is married to a U.S. citizen, was arrested on March 8, and his lawyers are fighting his deportation.
The Trump administration is seeking to deport him for his activist work in support of Palestine and Palestinians amid Israel’s war in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Khalil is eligible for deportation on the grounds that his “presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the country.
The filing Thursday was in response to Khalil’s motion to terminate the case.
Khalil’s lawyers said that the government’s latest claims contradict its previous descriptions of their clients arrest and video taken by his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, while also contradicting the arrest report that states agents told him that they had an arrest warrant.
According to a declaration filed last month in the case by Amy Greer, an attorney who has been representing Khalil since November, she said an arresting officer told her they had an administrative warrant.
Greer was on the phone with Khalil during the arrest, which occurred at the couple’s apartment.
An agent told Khalil to give him the phone, and Greer said in the filing that the person identified themselves as Special Agent Elvin Hernandez.
“I asked why DHS was detaining Mahmoud and whether they had a warrant. Agent Hernandez said they had an administrative warrant. I asked the basis of the warrant, and he said the U.S. Department of State revoked Mahmoud’s student visa,” Greer said in the March 10 filing.
Khalil’s lawyers are arguing that detaining Khalil without a warrant should be grounds for the case against him to be dismissed.
“Today, we now know why they never showed Mahmoud that warrant — they didn’t have one,” Greer said in a statement Thursday.
“This is clearly yet another desperate attempt by the Trump administration to justify its unlawful arrest and detention of human rights defender Mahmoud Khalil, who is now, by the government’s own tacit admission, a political prisoner of the United States.”
