Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the encampment protests at Columbia University last spring, was detained on March 8 at his student apartment building.
A federal judge in New Jersey has retained the case of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, rejecting the government’s request to move the case to Louisiana, where the Palestinian activist is being held following his arrest last month.
«The Petitioner was in New Jersey on March 9 at 4:40am. And Congress has required that the Petition must be taken as having been filed in New Jersey at that same moment. That vested this Court with jurisdiction. The Court’s jurisdiction is not defeated by the Petitioner having been moved to Louisiana», Judge Michael Fabiarz wrote in a 67-page opinion on Tuesday.
The opinion, unless appealed by the government, would clear the way for Fabiarz to decide the more substantive issues of Khalil’s continued confinement.
Khalil, a leader of the encampment protests at Columbia last spring, was detained on March 8 at his student apartment building in New York. He was taken to 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, then to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before ending up in a Louisiana detention center, his attorneys said.
After his lawyers filed a petition for Khalil’s immediate release, a federal judge in New York last month moved the case to New Jersey.
