Ask an attorney: An immigration lawyer breaks down the Mahmoud Khalil case

A federal court in Manhattan heard arguments Wednesday in a case challenging the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident who has been targeted for deportation by the Trump administration over his involvement in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.

Khalil, 30, was arrested by immigration agents on Saturday, March 8, at the Manhattan apartment that he shares with his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. He was reportedly taken to New Jersey and then to an ICE detention facility in Jena, La., where he is currently being held.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman issued an order halting Khalil’s deportation while the court considers a legal challenge brought by his attorneys, who argue that he is being illegally detained for engaging in protected speech. At a hearing in Manhattan on Wednesday, Furman ordered Khalil to remain in detention in Louisiana, declining to rule on a request by his lawyers to have him relocated closer to his home in New York.

Khalil, who completed his master’s degree from Columbia in December 2024, has said that he was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. He has not been charged with any crime.

However, in a post to social media on Monday, President Trump confirmed that Khalil’s arrest and attempted deportation are part of his administration’s effort to crack down on “students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”

“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump warned. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the administration was seeking to deport Khalil under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the secretary of state power to deport a noncitizen if the government “has reasonable ground to believe” the person’s presence could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

To better understand this complex case, Yahoo News spoke to immigration lawyer Michael Foote. His answers to our questions, which have been lightly edited for clarity, are below.

Yahoo News: What are the most important details everyone should know about this case?

Michael Foote: The primary issue when you’re looking at this case is there’s a lot of noise surrounding it, there’s a lot of buzzy headlines. But what it really comes down to is due process rights of people who are not U.S. citizens.

The core of what we’re talking about is, what parts of the Constitution apply to people who are not citizens of the U.S.? That is really the primary issue that we’re dealing with here: What does the Constitution afford migrants, people who are not natural U.S. citizens?

Some outlets refer to Khalil as a 'legal permanent resident' while others say he has a green card. Is there a difference between these two things?

It’s pretty much the same thing, it’s a synonym.

A “legal permanent residence” is the type of status you receive and with that immigration status, you receive what’s called a green card — a literal green card. So people who are legal permanent residents — or “LPR” individuals — are green card holders.

LPRs are, for all intents and purposes, one of the highest and most protected classes of migrants in the U.S.

Are legal permanent residents protected by the First Amendment?

Absolutely. Everyone, regardless of immigration background, is given some sort of protection under the First Amendment here in the U.S. People will migrate to the U.S. and claim asylum because they don’t have First Amendment rights in their home country.

When you are speaking out against a cause that you believe in, no one checks your passport before you do it. It's just a basic constitutional right here in the U.S. It's the right to protest and the right to free speech, regardless of your immigration status.

Is it possible to be deported once you have obtained a green card? What does it take to have your green card revoked?

There are very limited situations where you can be deported as an LPR green card holder. The really, really big one is if you’ve committed a violent crime that constitutes as a felony.

In these cases, Foote explained, a person must first be charged with a crime, brought to trial, found guilty and then, if the crime is serious enough, they will be placed in removal proceedings — a multiyear process in which they are allowed to mount a legal defense before facing deportation.

We can't just pull someone over who has a green card and say, ‘Oh, you have a green card, your taillight was out’ and then you're home in Guatemala the next day. That’s not how it works.

Was Khalil’s arrest part of the Trump’s administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration?

The Trump administration is creating a very subversive campaign to ensure that the migrant community remains afraid and does not attempt to cross the border. [They’re] trying to create very splashy headlines around immigration to scare migrants who have rightful claims to immigration status here in the U.S.

What’s the difference between ICE detention and jail? What do people need to know about the ICE detention facility in Jena, La., where Khalil is being held?

ICE detention centers are for people from all sorts of different backgrounds — sometimes there are people who are coming into the U.S. who are seeking asylum — so it includes people who are yet to have status.

And [it’s also where] people who are leaving under a deportation order are oftentimes held. But just because someone is being held at a detention center does not mean that they are imminently going to be deported.

Whereas, a jail is completely independent and separate from the immigration process. It’s the first place you go if you’ve committed a crime, before your arraignment.

There has been so much backlash to Khalil’s arrest, particularly from free speech advocates. What are people so concerned about?

This country was founded on the concept of protest — the Boston Tea Party, for example — and by literal revolutionaries — people who were free thinkers who wanted to leave Europe. The founding documents, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution [are] steeped in free speech.

Dissent is so important to who we are as Americans. It’s one of the greatest separators of our country from oppressive regimes around the world.

I was born in the U.S. Why should Khalil’s case matter to me?

A nonmigrant should care about this case for two reasons:

One, we should care because migrants are the literal founders of this country. Unless you are a Native American, you are a migrant, period. You should care how we treat migrants because if we [always] treated them so poorly, you wouldn’t be here.

The second point is that our rights are really only powerful if we protect them as a country. Our freedom of speech is here because we fought for it. It’s very much worth protecting and I think it’s probably one of the most important amendments we have.

Immigration is never really about one person’s story. It’s about groups of people, it’s about our identity as a country. Do we want to be a country that doesn’t tolerate free speech?