The US Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) rejected Mahmoud Khalil’s request to throw out his deportation case.
The Trump administration has been attempting to deport high-profile pro-Palestinian activist Khalil since 2025, arguing that his activism could harm US foreign policy.
Khalil’s lawyers have been attempting to have the case thrown out entirely, arguing it violates free speech (First Amendment) and is purely in retaliation for his pro-Palestinian activism.
However, the immigration appeals board ruled that the case can move forward in immigration court. It did not decide whether deporting him is right or wrong.
“I am not surprised by this decision from the biased and politically motivated Board of Immigration Appeals,” said Khalil. “I have committed no crime. I have broken no law. The only thing I am guilty of is speaking out against the genocide in Palestine – and this administration has weaponized the immigration system to punish me for it.”
Khalil’s lead immigration attorney, Marc Van Der Hout, said that, in all his time as an immigration lawyer, he had “never seen such a baseless and politically motivated decision.”
“Federal courts have already agreed that Mahmoud was targeted for his speech, and there is likely much more evidence of the government’s unlawful retaliation that has yet to come to light. This is a clear continuation of the administration’s retaliation against Mahmoud for exercising his First Amendment rights.”
Khalil was born in Syria to Palestinian parents. While a master’s student at Columbia University, he said that Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel were part of “a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here; that Palestinians are part of the equation.”
The Department of Homeland Security previously said, “Mahmoud Khalil refuses to condemn Hamas because he is a terrorist sympathizer, not because DHS ‘painted’ him as one. He ‘branded’ himself as an antisemite through his own hateful behavior and rhetoric.”
Khalil holds Algerian citizenship through his mother, and as such, the Trump administration has been pushing to have him deported to Algeria.
Trump admin. fires judges who halted deportations of pro-Palestinian students
In a separate but related development, the Trump administration has fired two immigration judges who blocked the deportation of two pro-Palestine international students, The New York Times first reported on Saturday.
Judges Roopal Patel and Nina Froes were both dismissed on Friday, alongside four other colleagues. Froes and Patel were respectively in charge of the well-known cases of Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi, international students in the United States who were arrested by ICE over their pro-Palestinian advocacy.
West Bank-raised Mahdawi was actively involved in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Mahdawi was a “terrorist sympathizer” who “bragged to a gun shop owner that he had considerable firearms experience," as he used to "kill Jews while he was in Palestine.”
He was arrested by hooded and masked immigration plainclothes officers and escorted into an unmarked vehicle in April 2025 in Vermont.
On April 14, 2025, Mahdawi’s legal team requested a temporary restraining order to prevent his transfer from Vermont by federal authorities, and the request was granted. He was then released on bail.
On February 13, 2026, immigration judge Nina Froes dismissed the deportation case against Mahdawi, ruling that the evidence the Trump administration had submitted to justify Mahdawi's removal was inadmissible in court.
Turkish national Rümeysa Öztürk was actively involved in anti-Israel campaigning and BDS activity at Tufts University. Stop Antisemitism said she “led pro-Hamas, violent, antisemitic, and anti-American events as a PhD student at Tufts.”
Ozturk was arrested by ICE in May 2025 while on the way to break the Ramadan fast. On January 22, 2026, court records relating to her case were unsealed by a federal judge in Boston. The file included her profile on Canary Mission and her op-ed in the Tufts Daily, suggesting that these were the basis of the case.
Homeland Security Investigations official Andre Watson said that ICE was considering whether Ozturk’s actions “may constitute violations of President Trump’s executive orders on antisemitism” and that “HSI is concerned that Ozturk’s involvement in these activities and associations with these groups may undermine US foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization.”
In January 2026, Immigration Judge Roopal Patel ruled that there were no grounds to deport Ozturk and blocked any further proceedings against her.
Judges Patel and Froes were both appointed by the Biden administration in 2024. The NYT said that both fit the profile of judges who have lost their jobs during the second Trump administration: “They had been appointed by a Democrat and previously represented immigrants in court.” The Trump administration has fired around 100 immigration judges since 2025.
Additionally, according to the NYT, the number of people being ordered to be deported has risen sharply, while judges have approved asylum claims in fewer than 10 percent of cases this year, the lowest rate for which data is available.