Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University protest leader in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, hid his work for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) when he applied for a green card, according to federal prosecutors. Khalil worked for the terror-tied agency at the time of Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and concealing the job while applying for permanent residency last March justifies his deportation, the prosecutors say.
A Department of Homeland Security document filed in court on Thursday states Khalil—a Columbia graduate student and spokesman for the notorious anti-Semitic student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest—"failed to disclose" his position as an UNRWA political affairs officer, which he held from June 2023 to November 2023. Khalil also omitted a second position with the Syria office at the British embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, according to the filing.
The filing comes as Khalil, a Syrian native and Algerian national who is married to an American citizen, challenges his impending deportation, arguing that his detention is a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech. Green card applicants who "conceal group memberships" that would threaten their residency status are considered guilty of fraud. Federal prosecutors will need to prove that Khalil willfully omitted his work for UNRWA and the Syria office.
"Khalil’s First Amendment arguments falter on their own terms," Department of Justice prosecutors wrote in a Sunday court filing. "Khalil withheld membership in certain organizations and failed to disclose continuing employment by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut when he submitted his adjustment of status application."
"It is black-letter law that misrepresentations in this context are not protected speech," the document went on. "Thus, Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring, and there is an independent basis to justify removal sufficient to foreclose Khalil’s constitutional claim here."
An independent U.N. investigation determined last year that UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 attacks, leading the agency to fire nine officials in August. A month later, a watchdog group revealed that a prominent UNRWA official who worked as a principal at a U.N. school moonlighted as Hamas's top commander in Lebanon. And last month, an UNRWA media adviser attended a Hamas-affiliated webinar and argued that UNRWA was also a casualty of the Oct. 7 terror rampage.
The humanitarian agency has been banned from operating in Israeli territory, a move that Washington backed. The Biden administration also pulled funding from UNRWA in January 2024 in light of allegations that its members were involved in Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre.
Several major news outlets have reported on the Trump administration’s filings against Khalil, but downplayed UNRWA’s Hamas ties. CNN, for example, pointed to "[a]llegations" against UNRWA, but didn’t provide details. The New York Times referred to the agency simply as a "United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees" and didn’t mention its Hamas connections at all.
Khalil’s defense attorneys called the new justification to deport Khalil weak.
"We’re not at all surprised because it’s a recognition that the initial charges are unsustainable," one of Khalil’s attorneys, Baher Azmy, told CNN. "So, they’re going with a theory that they must think is more legally defensible. But I just think this doesn’t cure the obvious taint of retaliation."
Another one of Khalil’s attorneys, Ramzi Kassem, has defended al Qaeda terrorists, namely Ahmed al-Darbi, who was convicted in 2017 for the bombing of a French oil tanker, the Washington Free Beacon reported. His former clients also include multiple Guantanamo Bay detainees, including a "close associate" of Osama bin Laden.
Khalil has been in ICE custody since March 9 after the Trump administration revoked his visa and green card for leading "activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization." Since then anti-Israel activists and groups have rallied to his defense. He’s currently detained at an ICE facility in Louisiana and last week had his immigration petition transferred to the U.S. District Court of New Jersey after a New York judge ruled it had no jurisdiction to oversee the case.