Judge Orders Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil Deported to Algeria or Syria

Finds "underlying fraud” and “willfully misrepresented material fact(s).”

A speaker at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, C. Emmanuel Wright, used a speech at a graduation event to criticize the Trump administration’s detention of Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-Israel activist at Columbia. Screenshot via the Harvard Gradute School of Education official YouTube channel.

A Columbia University anti-Israel activist named Mahmoud Khalil had a moment in the spotlight earlier this year as a supposedly sympathetic free speech hero.

At Harvard Law School’s Class Day, part of the graduation ceremonies at the school, the Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law at Harvard, Andrew Manuel Crespo, described Khalil as among “multiple scholars targeted in this way for their constitutionally protected speech, including Mahmoud Khalil, the first to be arrested, who remains detained even now, and who the federal government has fought to prevent from so much as touching his newborn baby boy. This is what authoritarianism looks like.”

At a Harvard Graduate School of Education graduation convocation, student speaker C. Emmanuel Wright also spoke about the Khalil case, likening it to the anti-black racism of the 1960s south:

Today, we are seeing the same tactics return, dressed in new clothes: policies that seem neutral but disproportionately punish the marginalized. Tests of worthiness. Standards not designed for equity, but exclusion.

It has been two months since Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia University, was detained in an immigration facility in Louisiana. He wrote a letter welcoming his newborn son. In it, he asked: “Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?”

That question does not just haunt. It exposes. It reminds us that the violence we fight is embedded in the systems that surround us — systems designed to surveil, to silence, to discipline anyone who dares to speak truths institutions would rather suppress.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression weighed in with a statement denouncing Khalil’s deportation. “The only ‘crime’ the government has offered was that Mahmoud Khalil expressed a disfavored political opinion. If that’s a crime in America, every single one of us is guilty,” it said.

Columbia president Claire Shipman acknowledged him by name in her 2025 Commencement address: “we firmly believe that our international students have the same rights to freedom of speech as everyone else, and should not be targeted by the government for exercising that right. And let me also say that I know many in our community today are mourning the absence of our graduate, Mahmoud Khalil.”

The New York Times had Khalil on the Ezra Klein show to talk about “manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia” and to defend “Globalize the intifada” (“overwhelmingly civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation,” Khalil claimed). Khalil said, “There is a moral imperative for me to speak up.” The Times headlined it, “The Trump Administration Tried to Silence Mahmoud Khalil, So I Asked Him to Talk.” The Times described Khalil’s arrest as part of an intimidation effort: “It wanted everyone to ask: If they could do this to Khalil, could they do it to me? If they could detain him on such flimsy grounds, could they not come up with a reason to detain me?”

Even the sensible editorialists at the Wall Street Journal weighed in with a March 12 editorial, “Mahmoud Khalil and His Green Card,” averring, “The Administration needs to be careful that it is targeting real promoters of terrorism, and not breaking the great promise of a green card by deporting anyone with controversial political views.” It said, “Mr. Khalil may deserve deportation, but he also deserves due process.” Hard to argue with that.

So it’s interesting to observe the silence now that, after some protracted due process, United States Immigration Judge Jamee Comans has ordered Khalil “be removed from the United States to Algeria, or in the alternative to Syria.” Here are the details on Comans’s decision and what might, or should, come next:

Comans found, “The Respondent lacks long-time residence in this country and has only been in the United States since December 2022, just shy of three years. The Respondent entered as a student to complete his graduate studies at an Ivy League University, which he completed in May 2025. The Respondent’s employment is limited to internships through the university while enrolled in school and he has not presented any evidence he was employed in any other capacity. There is no evidence of property or business ties. More importantly, the Respondent is a conditional lawful permanent resident and has not yet reached the pivotal point of adjusting status permanently.”

Comans went on, “The Court also takes into consideration, as a negative factor, the Respondent’s underlying fraud in the course of applying for adjustment of status. The Respondent failed to disclose his involvement, association and participation with United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), on his Form I-485. Candid disclosures by the Respondent may have triggered the need for additional information and further processing, involving some degree of discretionary decision-making on the part of the USCIS adjudicator. The evidence shows the Respondent knew of the potential immigration consequences for his involvement in protests organized by varying organizations on campus, including CUAD. The Respondent was quoted in the news stating that he did not participate in the protests during this time because he was worried about the immigration consequences of his participation, specifically that he would lose his student visa. The Court finds the Respondent’s lack of candor and purposeful failure to disclose complete information on the Form I-485 to be significant negative factors. His involvement, association, and participation with CUAD and UNRWA were such that the truth would predictably have disclosed other facts relevant to his qualifications.”

Comans went on, “This Court finds that the Respondent is an intelligent, ivy-league educated individual that understood the bold, capitalized letters at part 8, page 9 on the I-485 required the disclosure of his affiliations with UNRWA and CUAD. This Court further finds that the Respondent understood the consequences and that the candid disclosure of his affiliations might lead to an additional line of questioning and the ultimate denial of his application for conditional permanent residency. This Court finds that Respondent’s lack of candor on his I-485 was not an oversight by an uninformed, uneducated applicant. This Court finds that the Respondent’s purposeful, non-disclosure was not a misrepresentation by another which imputed consequences to the Respondent. Rather, this Court finds that Respondent willfully misrepresented material fact(s) for the sole purpose of circumventing the immigration process and reducing the likelihood his application would be denied. This Court cannot and will not condone such an action by granting a discretionary waiver. To do so, would encourage future applicants to take the gamble of materially misrepresenting facts and then seeking a waiver if it is somehow discovered by the U.S. government.”

Got that? “Underlying fraud.” “Willfully misrepresented material fact(s).”

Khalil has an abundance of lawyers. They are trying with Judge Michael Farbiarz of the U.S. District of New Jersey. If that fails, they will try again with any other judge or judges who will side with the anti-Israel campus protesters against the Trump administration.

In the meantime, or once it is eventually resolved with some finality, maybe Harvard will email an update about the case to all the innocent students and parents who just wanted to attend the university’s 2025 graduation-related ceremonies and who, instead, were subjected to partisan political sermonizing.

The Harvard graduation speakers, after all, described as “authoritarianism” or likened to Civil Rights-era antiblack racism the effort to prevent immigration fraud by a boycott-Israel, globalize-the-intifada activist. This as the university was in a highly visible multi-billion-dollar legal and political standoff with the Trump administration over antisemitism.

As an update, Harvard could pass along Judge Comans’s finding about “underlying fraud” and having “willfully misrepresented material fact(s).” Absent such an update on the facts of the case, people might begin to suspect that maybe what really matters to Harvard’s graduation speakers isn’t really the rule of law or truthfulness or due process at all. People might begin to suspect that what it’s really all about is just a results-oriented outcome—cheering on anything that advances the anti-Israel agenda in America.

In a May 27, 2025 interview with the Harvard Gazette, Harvard President Alan Garber said “we want to help our students learn how to think about values and how to act on them, but that doesn’t mean that we should tell them which values they should adopt. Except ‘veritas.’ I hope that every graduate embraces the importance of truth and chooses to live by it.” How does valorizing a fraud such as Mahmoud Khalil square with that?

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