Mahmoud Khalil felt as if he was being kidnapped when he was handcuffed and shackled and rushed from New York to immigration detention in Louisiana final weekend, his attorneys wrote in an up to date lawsuit demanding that the Columbia College graduate pupil be launched from custody instantly.
The activist has advised his attorneys that brokers who arrested him at his college housing final Saturday night time, in entrance of his eight-month pregnant spouse, by no means recognized themselves.
As soon as in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention in Louisiana, he was left to sleep in a bunker with no pillow or blanket, as high Trump administration officers cheered the hassle to deport a person his attorneys say generally turned the “public face” of pupil protests on Columbia’s campus final yr towards Israel’s army actions in Gaza.
The submitting late Thursday in Manhattan federal court docket was the results of a federal choose’s Wednesday order that they lastly be allowed to talk with Khalil.
The Trump administration has not accused him of any legal conduct however has stated he’s aligned with Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza and is designated as a terrorist group by the US. It has invoked an obscure authorized provision to attempt to deport him.
One among his attorneys, Donna Lieberman, advised CNN on Friday in a TV interview: “This can be a focused, retaliatory and excessive assault on the fitting of free expression” and stated Khalil was being detained “for having concepts.”
“They’re not claiming he did something unlawful they simply don’t like what he has stated,” she added, warning that “it’s an try to bully college students, college and the remainder of us…this transfer to quell free speech is completely terrifying.”
The attorneys stated of their submitting that his therapy by federal authorities from Saturday, when he was first arrested, to Monday reminded Khalil of when he left Syria shortly after the pressured disappearance of his pals there throughout a interval of arbitrary detention in 2013.
“All through this course of, Mr Khalil felt as if he was being kidnapped,” the attorneys wrote of his therapy.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump heralded Khalil’s arrest as the primary “of many to come back,” vowing on social media to deport college students he stated interact in “pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American exercise.”
In court docket papers, attorneys for the justice division stated Kahlil was detained beneath a legislation permitting Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, to take away somebody from the nation if he has cheap grounds to imagine their presence or actions would have doubtlessly critical hostile overseas coverage penalties. Trump and Rubio have been added as defendants within the civil lawsuit searching for to free Khalil.
After Khalil, who’s a US inexperienced card holder, or everlasting resident, and a Palestinian, was arrested on Saturday night time he was held for some hours then sooner or later early on Sunday was taken to the Elizabeth Detention Middle in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a privately-run facility the place he spent the remainder of the night time in a chilly ready room for processing, his request for a blanket denied, the lawsuit stated.
He was flown to Louisiana and arrived at 1am on Monday and a police automobile took him to the Louisiana Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana.
He worries about his spouse and is “additionally very involved about lacking the start of his first little one,” the lawsuit stated.
He was denied launch throughout a federal court docket listening to in New York on Wednesday and his arrest has sparked protests. The federal government is making an attempt to maneuver his case to Louisiana, the place courts are extra conservative. Khalil has beforehand labored for the British authorities.
The Related Press contributed reporting.
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