Exclusive: Mahmoud Khalil's Attorney on Breaking Developments in Detained Columbia Graduate's Case

It has been 11 days since Department of Homeland Security agents working under the direction of the Trump White House detained Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, handcuffing him in the lobby of his apartment building. Khalil is a legal U.S. permanent resident and green card holder, and his wife, who is eight months pregnant, is a U.S. citizen. DHS took him to 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, then to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before shipping him to Louisiana—a significantly less favorable jurisdiction.

On Wednesday, Judge Jesse M. Furman in the Southern District of New York denied the Trump administration’s attempt to move Khalil’s case—and therefore the jurisdiction—from New Jersey to Louisiana. The New Jersey court will now decide if Khalil himself will be moved out of the notorious Louisiana facility. “What I think is important is that he did not transfer the case to Louisiana, which would be away from his entire legal team and would just put the case in a very different situation,” said Amy Greer, one of Khalil’s attorneys, in an interview with Drop Site. Greer said she hopes that Khalil is granted bail and released from ICE custody. “Mahmoud's wife would love to have him back home and supporting her and of course we would all want that too, as does his whole community want him back as soon as possible.”

Greer, who represents Khalil in the deportation case alongside attorneys from the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, CLEAR, and other attorneys, said that the Trump administration’s recent defiance of orders issued by federal judges, including in deporting people from the U.S., raises alarm bells in Khalil’s case. “I think it's absolutely a concern. We can't operate in a vacuum here thinking that the rule of law will insulate us completely,” she said. “The public support [for Khalil], that's all we can rely on right now.”

One of the central tactics the Trump administration is deploying in its crusade against speech opposing Israel’s wars has been to cancel or withhold federal funding to Columbia and dozens of other colleges and universities. A U.S. congressional task force announced just days before Khalil’s arrest that it would “conduct a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.” Four days later, on March 7, the Trump administration announced it had canceled approximately $400M in federal grants to Columbia saying it had failed to “protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment.” The next day, Khalil was arrested.

After his detention, Khalil and several other anonymous students filed a federal lawsuit to block Columbia University and Barnard College from handing over private disciplinary records to the House Committee on Education and Workforce, arguing that doing so would violate their First Amendment rights and the privacy rights guaranteed to them as students. The suit, led by CAIR-NY and the firm Dratel & Lewis, claims that the House Committee’s demand to the universities was “coercive,” constituting “jawboning”—an effort to indirectly silence speech that skirts the First Amendment and constitutes an abuse of power.

The suit also named the congressional committee chair, Illinois Republican Rep. Tim Walberg, as a defendant. “The committee is using the cudgel of individual student disciplinary records, and the agencies are using the cudgel of withholding funds, all to pressure Columbia to turn over identifying information of students, to scale back academic freedom and the right of free speech and association on its campuses, and also to turn over names and associations of students, faculty and staff that obviously these agencies,” said Greer. “We felt compelled to bring the suit.”

In a letter made public earlier this week, the pressure was made even more explicit. The letter, sent on March 13 by the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration to Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, and co-chairs of the trustees of the university, makes Columbia’s federal funding contingent on several demands, including the “expulsion or multi-year suspension” of activists who participated in the occupation of Hamilton Hall in April, 2024. This is despite the fact that—as Drop Site has previously reported—Columbia set up an office expressly for the purpose of investigating and punishing Columbia students for participating in pro-Palestine protests. To date, at least 22 students have been expelled, suspended, or had their degrees revoked.

The government’s letter also called for a ban on mask wearing and instructed the university to “formalize, adopt, and promulgate a definition of antisemitism” consistent with President Trump’s Executive Order. The Trump administration has consistently conflated criticism of Israel or Zionism with anti-semitism. The suit charges that this directive is “tantamount to an Israel-specific speech code that subjects students to punishment for making common and typical criticisms of one particular foreign country.” The letter also required the university to abolish its own judicial board and place all power under the president of the university and to put the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under “academic receivership” for a minimum of five years.

“U.S. taxpayers invest enormously in U.S. colleges and universities, including Columbia University, and it is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that all recipients are responsible stewards of federal funds,” the March 13 letter from the government to Columbia asserted. “Columbia University, however, has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment in addition to other alleged violations of Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Pursuant to your request, this letter outlines immediate next steps that we regard as a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.”

On Wednesday, Khalil’s legal team filed an amended complaint, expanding the civil suit in response to that letter. The suit names as additional defendants Attorney General Pam Bondi, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and the head and general counsel of the Department of Justice Taskforce to Combat Antisemitism, Leo Terrell and Sean Keveney. Josh Gruenbaum, the Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner of the General Services Administration, is also named. Khalil’s lawyers asked the judge to issue a preliminary injunction directing Columbia University not to respond to the directives from the Trump administration and to prevent “the federal government from illegally enlisting Columbia University into punishing and suppressing a viewpoint federal officials do not like.”

“The government cannot use a third party to launder their efforts to infringe your first Amendment rights. They can't say to Columbia or to other entities, we're going to take away your licensing, take away your funding, we are going to hyper regulate you as a way to coerce you into doing our dirty work and infringing upon those free speech, free expression and free association rights,” said Greer. “That's exactly what's been happening here.”

Khalil’s suit also points to a February 13 letter sent by Committee Chair Rep. Tim Walberg to the president and trustees of Columbia requesting records concerning both the occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall in April 2024 as well as several alleged protests and incidents since September 2024. “Columbia’s continued failure to address pervasive antisemitism that persists on campus is untenable, particularly given that the university receives billions in federal funding,” Walberg wrote.

The suit argues the reference to “billions in federal funding” an “an improper use of the Committee’s power to ‘do indirectly what [they] are barred from doing directly,’ which is to chill and suppress speech.” The Committee’s letter, they write “in effect coerces the University to ignore the law by making oblique threats to the ‘billions in federal funding’ the Universities receive.”

Mahmoud Khalil’s attorneys are engaged in what may well be a precedent-setting case that cuts to the core of issues surrounding speech, due process and the right of all of us to dissent from the foreign policies of the US government and to oppose the genocidal policies of foreign governments—in this case Israel. The Trump administration is using Khalil as a test case in its sweeping campaign to dramatically expand the powers of the executive branch and to crush some of the rights granted under the Constitution.

“I think what happens with this case,” Greer said, “is a true bellwether to whether or not we, as Americans, want to preserve our right to speech and expression and association, or whether we're going to let this administration roll back those rights.”

Correction, March 19, 2025: This story previously said 22 students had been expelled. This was an editorial error; 22 is the total number of expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations.