Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

A US immigration judge has ordered the deportation of pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil to Algeria or Syria. In an order dated September 12, Louisiana Judge Jamee Comans leaned into Trump administration allegations that in his permanent residency application, Khalil failed to disclose his work with UNRWA and the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut, along with his ties to a pro-Palestine student group at Columbia University. Comans thus denied Khalil’s application for a waiver of removability, a legal order that waives a particular ground for deportation, permitting an individual to stay in the United States, and ordered his deportation – in what her ruling states as “the interests of this country.”

“It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech. Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again,” said Mahmoud Khalil in response to the ruling. “When their first effort to deport me was set to fail, they resorted to fabricating baseless and ridiculous allegations in a bid to silence me for speaking out and standing firmly with Palestine, demanding an end to the ongoing genocide. Such fascist tactics will never deter me from continuing to advocate for my people’s liberation.”

Khalil’s team has already moved to challenge Comans’ order. On September 17, Khalil’s lawyers submitted a letter to the federal court in New Jersey which is overseeing Khalil’s civil rights case, explaining that Khalil will challenge Comans’s order.

“When the immigration prosecutor, judge, and jailor all answer to Donald Trump, and that one man is eager to weaponize the system in a desperate bid to silence Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident whose only supposed sin is that he stands against an ongoing genocide in Palestine, this is the result,” said Ramzi Kassem, co-director of CUNY CLEAR (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility), one of the organizations part of his legal team, which includes the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Dratel & Lewis, Van Der Hout LLP, and Washington Square Legal Services. “A plain-as-day First Amendment violation that also puts on sharp display the rapidly freefalling credibility of the entire US immigration system.”

“We will win”: Khalil continues activism for Palestine

Since his release in June, Khalil has not once shied away from continuing his advocacy for Palestine. Only days after leaving an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, Khalil appeared on the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Harlem, only blocks away from his alma mater of Columbia University. Khalil answered questions from the press while surrounded by hundreds of his fellow Columbia student activists and supporters from the pro-Palestine movement. When a journalist asked him what his message was to students who might be afraid to speak out based on what happened to him, Khalil firmly said “We will win.”

Khalil also attended and spoke at the Peoples Conference for Palestine in August, where he said again, “the Palestinian liberation movement is winning.”

“The fact that I was targeted by the highest officials and levels of this country means that we are winning.”

Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.