Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who the Trump administration has claimed is a national security threat, is in immigration detention in Louisiana.
Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate detained by the Trump administration last weekend, have not been able to hold a private conversation with their client since his arrest.
That revelation came from a hearing in Manhattan federal court Wednesday, as lawyers for Mr. Khalil and the government appeared in front of a judge, Jesse Furman, to discuss Mr. Khalil’s detention, which has raised significant concerns about free speech protections amid President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Mr. Khalil, a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the Columbia University campus, was arrested by federal immigration agents
in New York on Saturday and is being held at a facility in Louisiana. He has not been charged with any crime.
But the Trump administration has accused him of siding with terrorists, and justified his detention by citing an obscure statute that grants the secretary of state the power to declare that someone whose presence in the United States is “adversarial” to the country’s foreign policy and national security interests is subject to deportation.
Early Sunday morning, lawyers for Mr. Khalil filed a petition questioning the circumstances of his detention. They have asked Judge Furman to compel the government to return him to New York....
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Imprisoned far away, not charged with a crime....because he said something the current government doesn't like.