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Mahmoud Khalil felt as though he was being kidnapped when he was handcuffed and shackled and rushed from New York to immigration detention in Louisiana last weekend, his lawyers wrote in an updated lawsuit demanding that the Columbia University graduate student be released from custody immediately.
The activist has told his lawyers that agents who arrested him at his university housing last Saturday night, in front of his eight-month pregnant wife, never identified themselves.
Once in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention in Louisiana, he was left to sleep in a bunker with no pillow or blanket, as top Trump administration officials cheered the effort to deport a man his lawyers say sometimes became the “public face” of student protests on Columbia’s campus last year against Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
The filing late Thursday in Manhattan federal court was the result of a federal judge’s Wednesday order that they finally be allowed to speak with Khalil.
The Trump administration has not accused him of any criminal behavior but has said he is aligned with Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza and is designated as a terrorist organization by the US. It has invoked an obscure legal provision to try to deport him.
One of his lawyers, Donna Lieberman, told CNN on Friday in a TV interview: “This is a targeted, retaliatory and extreme attack on the right of free expression” and said Khalil was being detained “for having ideas.”
“They’re not claiming he did anything illegal they just don’t like what he has said,” she added, warning that “it’s an attempt to bully students, faculty and the rest of us…this move to quell free speech is absolutely terrifying.”
The lawyers said in their filing that his treatment by federal authorities from Saturday, when he was first arrested, to Monday reminded Khalil of when he left Syria shortly after the forced disappearance of his friends there during a period of arbitrary detention in 2013.
“Throughout this process, Mr Khalil felt as though he was being kidnapped,” the lawyers wrote of his treatment.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump heralded Khalil’s arrest as the first “of many to come,” vowing on social media to deport students he said engage in “pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity.”
In court papers, lawyers for the justice department said Kahlil was detained under a law allowing Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, to remove someone from the country if he has reasonable grounds to believe their presence or activities would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences. Trump and Rubio were added as defendants in the civil lawsuit seeking to free Khalil.
After Khalil, who is a US green card holder, or permanent resident, and a Palestinian, was arrested on Saturday night he was held for some hours then at some point early on Sunday was taken to the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a privately-run facility where he spent the rest of the night in a cold waiting room for processing, his request for a blanket denied, the lawsuit said.
He was flown to Louisiana and arrived at 1am on Monday and a police car took him to the Louisiana Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana.
He worries about his wife and is “also very concerned about missing the birth of his first child,” the lawsuit said.
He was denied release during a federal court hearing in New York on Wednesday and his arrest has sparked protests. The government is trying to move his case to Louisiana, where courts are more conservative. Khalil has previously worked for the British government.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
