JENA, La. — The Trump administration said Friday that it will continue to detain Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil, after a federal judge ruled that he could not be held based on the U.S. secretary of state’s determination that he could harm American foreign policy. The government said in a filing that it is instead holding Khalil, a legal U.S. resident, at an immigration lockup on allegations that he lied on his green card application. In a letter to U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey, Khalil’s lawyers said the government hasn’t shown any other grounds to keep detaining Khalil other than reasons Farbiarz has already rejected. They also said Khalil satisfied all of the court’s requirements to go free and that the government’s lawyers missed a Friday morning deadline to challenge the judge's Wednesday ruling ordering Khalil be set free. “The deadline has come and gone and Mahmoud Khalil must be released immediately,” his lawyers said in a statement provided by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is among the groups representing him. “Anything further is an attempt to prolong his unconstitutional, arbitrary, and cruel detention.” But in its filing Friday, the government argued that the judge never said it would be “unlawful” to hold Khalil for that reason and that it plans to keep him in detention on the grounds that he gave inaccurate information on his green card form. The federal court clerk’s office said Friday that the judge will respond to each side's arguments in a future filing. Khalil has disputed that he wasn’t forthcoming on the application, and his lawyers have argued that lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained for such a thing. Khalil maintains, among other things, that he was never employed by or served as an “officer” of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees , as the administration claims, but completed an internship approved by the university as part of his graduate studies. The Trump administration had previously vowed to appeal Farbiarz’s Wednesday ruling, in which the judge determined that Khalil had shown his continued detention was causing irreparable harm to his career, his family and his free speech rights. He previously ruled that expelling Khalil from the U.S. on those grounds was likely unconstitutional. Earlier Friday, the ACLU released a video featuring actors Mark Ruffalo, Mahershala Ali and other celebrity fathers reading a letter Khalil wrote to his newborn son from jail ahead of his first Father’s Day on Sunday. “One day you might ask why people are punished for standing up for Palestine,” read Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. “These are hard questions, but I hope our story shows you this: The world needs more courage, not less. It needs people who choose justice over convenience.” Khalil was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. His was the first arrest under President Donald Trump’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza . U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy. Khalil’s lawyers say the Trump administration is simply trying to crack down on free speech. Khalil isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The international affairs graduate student served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists. He wasn’t among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics. The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic. “Mahmoud Khalil was detained in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian rights. The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father’s Day as a family. Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in ICE detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians. It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”
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