An immigration judge in Louisiana has finally ordered the deportation of notorious pro-Hamas agitator Mahmoud Khalil, the radical Islamist who has been stirring up anti-American chaos on U.S. college campuses.
The order, issued by Judge Jamee Comans, demands that Khalil, a legal permanent resident with deep ties to Palestinian extremism, be shipped back to either Syria or Algeria for lying on his green card application by hiding his shady past employment and affiliations with questionable organizations.
Khalil is a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident, originally from Syria, with family ties to Algeria through his mother. He came into public view while a graduate student at Columbia, involved in organizing pro-Hamas campus protests.
Khalil completed his undergraduate degree in Beirut, Lebanon, and worked for UNRWA through 2023, a UN agency infiltrated by Hamas.
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, received $1 billion from Joe Biden when he was president.
Reports indicate that at least 12 UNRWA staffers took part in the mass slaughter of innocent Jews during the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.
Khalil had also threatened Columbia in the past, saying, “As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist.”
Then he had more ominous words: “Not only protests and encampments, the limit is the sky.”
He then was arrested on March 8, 2025, in New York by immigration authorities under a rarely used provision that permits the deportation of noncitizens deemed to pose “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” due to his ties to the Islamist terror group Hamas.
In June, a Biden-appointed federal judge in New Jersey, Michael Farbiarz, blocked the Trump administration from deporting Khalil on foreign policy grounds, finding that those grounds likely violate constitutional protections, especially free speech.
In the same month, U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman, an Obama appointee, slammed the brakes on the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Khalil.
He declared in his ruling that Khalil “shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court orders otherwise.”
Khalil was then released from prison. Two days later, he was leading pro-Hamas rallies in New York City, where he was calling for a global intifada.
Now, Politico reported that Judge Jamee Comans of Louisiana ruled that Khalil could be deported on the basis that he did not fully disclose certain past employment or organizational affiliations when he applied for his green card.
The government stated these omissions (or misrepresentations) render him removable under U.S. immigration law.
The ruling orders removal specifically to Syria, where he was born and lived in a Palestinian refugee camp, or Algeria, which granted him a passport through familial ancestry.
Politico reported:
The order from the immigration judge, Jamee Comans, came despite a separate order in Khalil’s federal case in New Jersey blocking his deportation while that court considers Khalil’s legal argument that his detention and deportation are unlawful retaliation for his Palestinian advocacy.
Khalil’s March 8 arrest and subsequent detention in Louisiana was part of the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on foreign-born pro-Palestinian academics who were studying or working in the U.S. legally. Khalil, a former Columbia graduate student who helped organize campus protests, was arrested at his Manhattan residence and put into deportation proceedings. He has not been charged with a crime.
In a letter to the New Jersey federal judge, Michael Farbiarz, Khalil’s lawyers said they have 30 days from Sept. 12, the date of the immigration judge’s ruling, to appeal her decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. The lawyers said they expect that process to be “swift” and that an appeal of the BIA decision, which would go to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, is unlikely to be successful, since, they wrote, the appeals court “almost never” grants stays of removal to noncitizens.
“As a result,” they wrote, “the only meaningful impediment to Petitioner’s physical removal from the United States would be this Court’s important order prohibiting removal during the pendency of his federal habeas case.” And, they wrote, “nothing would preserve his lawful permanent resident status.”
In a statement, Khalil, a Palestinian originally from Syria, accused the Trump administration of using “fascist tactics.”