Against the wishes of the Department of Justice, the anti-Israel protester who was arrested and detained by immigration officials earlier this month, Mahmoud Khalil, will have his case transferred to New Jersey from Louisiana, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. 

A New York federal judge, Jesse Furman, explained in his order that although Mr. Khalil was arrested in New York, by the time that Mr. Khalil’s lawyer filed a habeas corpus petition challenging his detainment, her client had already arrived in New Jersey. Therefore, Judge Furman ruled, the New York court “lacks jurisdiction over most, if not all, of Khalil’s claims.”

Should the case have remained in Louisiana, any appeal would have likely been brought to the Fifth United States Appeals Court, which is among the country’s most conservative. 

Judge Furman refrained from ruling on Mr. Khalil’s lawyers’ petition for his immediate release, focusing instead on the matter of court jurisdiction. Though Mr. Furman added that his March 10 injunction that barred the government from deporting the graduate student while the case plays out would remain in effect, “unless and until the transferee court orders otherwise.”

Mr. Khalil, who was born in Syria but holds citizenship in Algeria, was arrested on March 8 after the State Department revoked his visa and green card over his alleged support for Hamas. The 31-year-old graduated in December with a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and, during his schooling, served as one of the ringleaders of the anti-Israel student encampment movement that has roiled Columbia since October 7, 2023. 

The anti-Israel group that Mr. Khalil was closely affiliated with, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, has been behind some of the most virulent anti-Israel campus protests in the country and shares what can only be described as pro-terror, anti-West content on its well-followed Instagram account. Not only does the student group advocate for violent resistance against Zionism, but it has also professed its goal of “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”

Mr. Khalil’s lawyers have argued that their client’s arrest reflects an effort by the government to repress pro-Palestinian speech and is in violation of the First Amendment. Secretary of State Rubio, who personally signed off on the order to detain the student activist, maintains, however, that the case “is not about free speech” but “about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with,” he told reporters last week. 

The White House has pointed to Mr. Khalil’s alleged support for American-designated terror group, Hamas, and evidence that he distributed pro-Hamas propaganda fliers. Mr. Khalil is featured in video footage of a recent illegal protest at Barnard, during which members of his group occupied a university library and handed out propaganda pamphlets authored by the “Hamas Media Office.” 

Wednesday’s ruling comes just a few hours after Mr. Khalil wrote a scathing letter while detained in Louisiana, in which he calls himself a “political prisoner” who is “bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.” 

Mr. Khalil, who dictated his cri de cœur over the phone, claims that his arrest was “a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza” and suggests the Trump administration targeted him “as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent.” 

He further accuses Columbia’s leaders — including the former President, Nemat Shafik, Interim President Katrina Armstrong, and Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo — of laying “the groundwork” for the government to go after him by “arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing — based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked.” He branded Columbia’s recent expulsion and suspension of 22 anti-Israel student activists involved in the violent takeover of Hamilton Hall as an example of the school having “surrendered to federal pressure.” 

Mr. Khalil closed out his declaration from behind bars by calling on his fellow student activists to “unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine,” claiming that “at stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.” He added: “If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation,” he wrote.