A federal judge will weigh whether to block Columbia University from sharing the private disciplinary records of graduate student Mahmoud Khalil and seven other students with a Republican-led House committee.
At a hearing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian asked lawyers for the students and the U.S. government to submit any additional arguments by Thursday, and said he would render his decision shortly after that deadline.
Khalil and the other plaintiffs sued Columbia and the House Education and Workforce Committee on March 13 to block the committee’s request for disciplinary records for students involved in about a dozen incidents. According to a Feb. 13 letter the committee sent to the university, the incidents include the student takeover of Hamilton Hall, the protest of a lecture taught by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several allegations of antisemitic harassment.
Khalil and the other plaintiffs, all of whom the lawsuit refers to by pseudonyms, have described the committee’s letter as intended to “chill the protected speech of University’s students.”
Mahmoud Khalil by the gates of Columbia University on April 30.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, names Columbia University, its interim president, Dr. Katrina Armstrong, and its board of trustees; Barnard College and its president, Laura Ann Rosenbury; and the House committee and its chair, Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich.
A spokesperson for the committee referred NBC News to a statement the committee posted Tuesday on X.
“Nothing in the Constitution requires duly-elected Members of Congress to sit idly by as a wave of antisemitism sweeps over our nation’s college campuses, leading to discrimination against Jewish students at institutions of higher education receiving billions of dollars in federal funds,” the committee wrote.
Columbia, Barnard and the plaintiffs’ attorneys did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Khalil, a graduate student who helped lead last year’s student protests against the war in Gaza, was arrested by immigration authorities this month.
The Trump administration has cited an obscure provision within immigration law, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, to justify Khalil’s apprehension. The clause allows the secretary of state to deport noncitizens if the secretary determines their presence in the United States could adversely affect foreign policy.
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent who is living in the country legally, filed a separate lawsuit to fight his deportation shortly after he was arrested.
“The only activities they’ve ever identified. which they say are contrary to the foreign policy interest of the United States, is his constitutionally protected speech and advocacy on behalf of Palestinian human rights,” Khalil’s attorney, Bahmer Azmy, told NBC News on Monday. “If the government can say any speech you engage in that dissents from us, foreign policy, can get you arrested, detained and deported, then I think we’re all in pretty serious trouble.”
Khalil, whose American wife is eight months pregnant, has been held in an immigration detention center in Louisiana since he was arrested. A judge has blocked his deportation amid the lawsuit fighting his expulsion from the country.
The Trump administration filed new allegations in court Sunday, arguing that Khalil withheld information about his membership in certain organizations in his green card application. They added that he failed to disclose his employment at the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut.
Khalil’s legal team rejected the allegations, saying he not a “member” of UNRWA (United Nations Relief Agency), but completed an internship there, as well as at the Palestine Mission of the U.N. and his final one was his Capstone project with Communities Speak. The internship was approved by Columbia for credit, his attorney Marc Van Der Hout said Tuesday.
He said the allegation that Khalil worked beyond 2022 at the British Embassy in Beirut is “simply wrong and would be completely irrelevant even if accurate.”
“His work there ended in December 2022, as he stated in his residency application,” Van Der Hout said.
Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, called the government’s allegations ridiculous.
“They underscore that the U.S. government has no ground to stand on in my husband’s case,” Abdalla said in a statement Tuesday. “ The Trump administration is grasping at straws to find charges to bring against my husband, who has done nothing except speak up for Palestinians who are being killed with U.S. weapons in Gaza. These latest allegations only demonstrate that the government recognizes the original charges are baseless and is desperately seeking a leg to stand on.”
Khalil’s detention prompted national outrage and an outpouring of criticism that the administration was trying to quell free speech. His arrest was the first of several university students in recent weeks.
Separately, immigration authorities arrested a graduate student at Georgetown University last week and a second Columbia student the week before. A third international student studying at Columbia also fled to Canada this month after her student visa was revoked. The student, Indian national Ranjani Srinivasan, has claimed she did not participate in the campus protests last spring.
A professor at Brown University was also denied re-entry into the United States after having returned from a trip to Lebanon. Homeland Security officials said last week that the professor told them she attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the killed leader of the terrorist organization Hezbollah.
Two student protesters, one from Cornell and the other from Columbia, have also sued the Trump administration in recent days and accused immigration authorities of trying to apprehend them.
Georgetown University students are expected to stage a walkout Tuesday in protest of the apprehension of the graduate student, Bader Khan Suri.
Amid student arrests, the Trump administration has also gone after the universities themselves.
The administration stripped Columbia of $400 million in federal grants on March 7, accusing it of “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Last week, the White House announced that it would also pause $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania after it allowed a transgender athlete to compete on its women’s swimming team several years ago.
In an effort to restore the funding, Columbia ceded to several of the administration’s demands Friday. It banned masks at protests in most cases, hired 36 new campus security officers — who, unlike previous security officers, will have the ability to arrest students — and agreed to hire a senior vice provost to oversee the Department of Middle East, South Asian and African studies.
On Tuesday, the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers sued the Trump administration on behalf of several Columbia professors. The groups argued that the threat of pulling funds and subsequent demands for its restoration violated the professors’ right to free speech.
“Under the circumstances, it should come as little surprise that Columbia last week acceded to the Trump administration’s demands,” the lawsuit says. “That concession demonstrates the federal government’s immense financial leverage and underscores the threat to academic freedom where such leverage is exercised unlawfully.”
A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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