(New York) An American judge finally authorized Donald Trump’s government on Friday to keep Mahmoud Khalil in prison in Propalestinian demonstrations on the Columbia campus held for three months in a detention center awaiting his expulsion.
His fate is the subject of multiple judicial twists and turns.
On Wednesday, judge Michael Fabiarz of the New Jersey Federal Court, near New York, had taken a prescription saying that the government could not hold or expel Mr. Khalil based on the statements of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. According to the latter, his presence on American soil posed a threat to the security of the United States.
The judge had in the process given to the government until Friday to release Mr. Khalil. The American authorities did not release Mr. Khalil and indicated, in court documents, that they did not intend to do so.
The same judge Michael Fabiarz finally authorized in fact on Friday afternoon his continued detention because he “is detained on another, second count of accusation,” said his decision.
The American press indicates that he is accused of not having provided certain information on his work or his commitment to the boycott campaign of Israel to obtain his permanent resident title.
Since his arrest in New York on March 8, for his role as spokesperson for the challenge against the war in Gaza on the New York campus, Mahmoud Khalil has become the symbol of the will of the American president to muzzle this student movement, which, according to him, is anti-Semitism.
After his arrest by the Federal Immigration Police (ICE), Mahmoud Khalil, born in Syria of Palestinian parents, a young graduate and holder of a green resident card, had been transferred to almost 2000 kilometers, to a Louisiana detention center (South), with a view to his expulsion.
His wife, Noor Abdalla, a dentist born in Michigan, recently gave birth to their son when the father was in detention.
