Legal representatives for a prominent pro-Palestinian Arab activist launched a new bid on Friday to halt federal efforts to deport him, leveling accusations that the Trump administration manipulated the judicial process.
The defense team claims that federal officials compromised the integrity of the proceedings to create a public example out of their client, according to an AFP report.
The target of the deportation order is Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student at New York's Columbia University. Khalil emerged as a highly visible leader of the anti-Israel encampments and demonstrations on campus during the height of the Gaza conflict.
In March 2025, Khalil was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for posing a threat to national security. He was released in late June after a judge ruled that his detention was unconstitutional.
The Trump administration has consistently advocated for Khalil's expulsion from the country, presenting a legal argument that his ongoing political activities run counter to the foreign policy interests of the United States. While Khalil was released from federal detention, the Department of Justice has persistently pursued his removal.
In January, the Trump Administration scored a legal victory when a federal appeals court rejected Khalil’s lawsuit against his detention and deportation, overturning a lower court ruling ordering his release. Trump administration officials later announced that Khalil would be deported to Algeria.
In a formal public statement issued on Friday, Khalil's attorneys asserted that they had uncovered administrative misconduct.
"New evidence reveals that the Trump Administration secretly engineered the outcome of his immigration case to make an example of him," Khalil's lawyers said in a statement.
The latest legal maneuver is a motion submitted to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), an agency under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Justice. The defense is demanding that the board re-open and ultimately terminate the case, pointing to an expedited ruling issued on April 9, 2026, which dismissed Khalil's previous appeals and finalized the deportation directive.
According to the new filing, the BIA handled the matter with unprecedented speed to satisfy political objectives rather than legal standards. The motion alleges that the board improperly influenced the lower immigration court's decision, fast-tracked his proceedings, bypassed the normal channels through which immigration appeals are docketed and adjudicated, and ultimately reached a decision in an unheard-of nine days.
Khalil’s defense team maintains that their client remains protected from immediate detention or physical deportation while subsequent judicial reviews are carried out.
The controversial activist faced widespread condemnation for his defense of the October 7, 2023 massacre that ignited the Israel-Hamas War. In an interview with The New York Times in August last year, he bizarrely attempted to justify the massacre as a “desperate attempt" by Hamas to “just break the cycle" of Palestinian Arab suffering.
He also refused to describe the attack as a “mistake," while acknowledging that “targeting civilians is wrong."
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)