The immigration judge overseeing the case of Mahmoud Khalil has demanded the government turn over evidence of his support for Hamas, a designated terror group, within the next 24 hours. If they fail to do so the judge said she would release Khalil on Friday.
At a hearing Tuesday in Louisiana, Judge Jamee Comans gave the government 24 hours to provide evidence showing that Khalil, a 30-year-old legal permanent resident, should be expelled from the country for his role in campus protests against Israel and the war in Gaza. If the evidence does not support his removal, she said, “then I am going to terminate the case on Friday.”…
At Tuesday’s hearing, an attorney for Khalil, Marc Van Der Hout, said he had “not received a single document” in response to his request for “evidence and assertions” in the case. “We cannot plead until we know what the specific allegations are,” Van Der Hout said.
“I’m like you Mr. Van Der Hout, I’d like to see the evidence,” the judge replied.
There really is no doubt that CUAD, the group which organized and led protests on campus, supports Hamas. I’ve covered this all before so I won’t repeat all of it but the NY Times has reported on the group’s statements endorsing violence including Hamas’ 10/7 attack on Israel:
“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, said in its statement revoking the apology.
The group marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a “moral, military and political victory” and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.
CUAD held a teach-in led by Hamas supporters from Samidoun and it has praised other terror attacks on Israeli civilians. They have also praised and held memorials for Yahya Sinwar the now-deceased mastermind of the 10/7 attack. CUAD’s off campus allies also support Hamas and have claimed they were inspired by them.
So there’s really no doubt this group was pro-terrorism, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel and anti-America as well. There’s also no doubt that Mahmoud Khalil repeatedly acted as a go-between for CUAD with the university and was seen as a leader of the group. Even after his graduation he was present at the library takeover which CUAD instigated last month. Here he is once again acting as a spokesperson and holding a bullhorn.
🚨SUSPECTED FOREIGN NATIONAL ALERT🚨
Mahmoud Khalil, allegedly from Syria, is a grad student at Columbia. Khalil appeared to be the lead negotiator for the Barnard College library occupation yesterday. He took the same role at the Columbia encampment & was suspended. pic.twitter.com/sMQ5aw7kZd— Canary Mission (@canarymission) March 6, 2025
This was an event where Hamas literature written by the Hamas media office was distributed.
Protestors in @BarnardCollege are handing out flyers authored by “Hamas Media Office”. Still think they’re pro-peace? Still think they don’t support terror? @BarnardCollege and @Columbia: it’s beyond time to take action. pic.twitter.com/P2xNLuJmsN
— Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students ✡️🇮🇱 (@CUJewsIsraelis) March 5, 2025
Happening now: protesters @BarnardCollege are handing out pamphlets written by the Hamas Media Office justifying October 7th.
This is terrorist support in its rawest and most obvious form. pic.twitter.com/1t2V9HDNvw
— Elisha (Lishi) Baker (@LishiBaker) March 5, 2025
So does this group support Hamas? Yes.
Is Khalil a leader of this group? Yes.
Whether or not those two facts are enough to justify deporting Khalil is what the judge needs to decide. Khalil’s defense attorney claimed he couldn’t issue a plea in the case until he saw what the government had on his client but Judge Comans didn’t go for it and made him respond to questions on the spot.
Comans again grew agitated when Van Der Hout asked for continuance a second time and claimed lawyers representing DHS had not provided evidence to back up the allegations against his client…
He urged the judge to allow him more time, saying “we can not plead” until they knew the evidence they had against Khalil.
But Comans denied his request and ordered Van Der Hout to enter Khalil’s plea for over 12 allegations on the spot.
The allegations ranged from procedural, such as “You are a native of Syria and a citizen of Algeria,” to accusations that he withheld information from DHS about his alleged membership in the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group…
Van Der Hout responded “deny” for each allegation.
So it sounds like Khalil is denying that he’s even a member of CUAD, at least if I’m following this ABC News account correctly. I don’t see how that is possibly going to fly since there are administrators at Columbia who negotiated with him as if he were a representative of the group. It’s going to take some clever lawyering to convince anyone he wasn’t even part of the group which he can be seen speaking for and ordering around with a bullhorn in the video above.
Antifa goons routinely claim there is no such group and therefore no membership and no one to be held responsible in civil or criminal court for anything. It’s a lie of course in the sense that the group definitely knows their members from outsiders, but a useful one from their perspective. As long as no written records are kept, they can get away with things. Maybe CUAD is going to claim something like that. Who knows what the gimmick here is.
Can this judge put 2 and 2 together here or will this be a case where so long as Khalil didn’t verbally confess to support for Hamas or personally hand out Hamas literature, the court will pretend he has no clear connection to what the group he was leading was doing in his presence.
