Mahmoud Khalil hid ties to UNRWA on green card application, feds say as they hit anti-Israel agitator with new accusations
Detained Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil hid his ties to the controversial United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on his visa application, the feds have alleged.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice lodged new accusations against the anti-Israel campus protest leader in court papers over the weekend, arguing that they should be grounds for his deportation.
Khalil — a green-card holder who was nabbed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in New York on March 8 — allegedly fraudulently applied to change his immigration status without disclosing his “membership in certain organizations,” the feds said.
Among those organizations was the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA, a relief agency that was infamously stripped of tens of millions of dollars in federal funding after an explosive report that some of its members took part in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Khalil was a political affairs officer with UNRWA from June through November 2023.
The DOJ also alleges that Khalil did not reveal he was working at the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, when he applied for his visa, or that he was a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest — an anti-Israel group that set off protests at the Ivy League school.
Khalil’s detainment has sparked a national debate over free speech rights, with his lawyers alleging he was illegally targeted for deportation by the US Department of Homeland Security over his activism — which they argue were actions protected by the First Amendment.
Khalil’s arrest has sparked a national debate over free speech rights. But the feds said in the filing from Sunday that the fact he allegedly lied on his application provided an “independent basis” to deport him, overriding free speech rights.
“Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring,” the filing alleges.
Freedom of speech doesn’t “overcome the executive’s prerogative and control over immigration,” the feds also claimed.
Khalil — a 30-year-old native of Syria of Palestinian descent and citizen of Algeria — was initially charged under an obscure law that allows the secretary of state to launch a deportation case against someone who is considered a threat to US foreign policy goals.
That charge still stands, along with the new allegations made against him last week.
Khalil entered the US on a student visa in December 2022 to pursue a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
He filed to become a permanent resident in 2024, after he married an American citizen, Noor Abdalla — who is currently eight months pregnant with their baby.
Khalil — who is being held in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana — is seeking to be freed from custody on the basis that his arrest was allegedly illegal.
But in the meantime, he’s asking a judge to have him transferred back to a lockup in New Jersey or New York so he can be closer to his expectant wife and work with his Big Apple lawyers to fight the case.
His deportation case must play out in immigration court before the feds can move forward with his deportation. Khalil’s lawyers have said they plan to file a response by Tuesday afternoon.
Marc Van Der Hout, Khalil’s immigration lawyer, said in a statement that the new charges “are completely meritless.”
The new accusations “show that the government has no case whatsoever on this bogus charge that his presence in the U.S. would have adverse foreign policy consequences,” Van Der Hout said. “This case is purely about First Amendment protected activity and speech, and U.S. citizens and permanent residents alike are free to say what they wish about what is going on in the world.”
Khalil is separately suing Columbia, the affiliated Barnard College and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and its chairman, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), to block the disciplinary records of any other students involved in antisemitic campus demonstrations from being released by the schools to Congress.
On Monday, lawyers for Walberg and the committee claimed a judge doesn’t have jurisdiction to interfere with legislators on this issue.
“Nothing in the Constitution requires duly-elected Members of Congress to sit idly by as a wave of antisemitism sweeps over our nation’s college campuses, leading to discrimination against Jewish students at institutions of higher education receiving billions of dollars in federal funds,” the court papers said.
With Post wires
