A Columbia University graduate and green card holder was arrested and marked for deportation by Donald Trump’s administration solely for his “advocacy for Palestinian rights,” lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil said in a federal courtroom in Manhattan on Wednesday.
Khalil — who is being processed for deportation in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana — was “identified, targeted, detained and is being processed for deportation on account of his advocacy for Palestinian rights,” according to Ramzi Kassem, an attorney with the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project at CUNY School of Law.