NEW YORK — Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s case was transferred to New Jersey on Wednesday by a federal judge in New York, a key move that will keep any appeals in the case away from conservative judges in the South.

Judge Jesse Furman’s decision marked a compromise between Khalili’s bid to keep the case in Manhattan and the Justice Department’s attempt to move it to Louisiana.

“These conclusions flow from the undisputed fact that, at 4:40 a.m. on March 9, 2025, when Khalil’s lawyer filed the Petition on his behalf, he was detained in New Jersey,” Manhattan Federal Judge Jesse Furman wrote.

Attorneys for Khalil and the Trump administration had sparred over removing the case from New York City to the South, where he is currently being held in an immigration detention facility and will remain until a judge orders otherwise. A federal court in New Jersey acknowledged receipt of the transfer later Wednesday.

Had the case been transferred to Louisiana, Khalil’s lawyers would have had to target any appeals to the Fifth Circuit, considered the most conservative in the country.

Khalil, who as a green card holder is a lawful permanent resident, is facing possible deportation for his participation in campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza and Columbia’s investment ties to the Israeli regime. He has not been charged with any crimes.

Instead, the government says his advocacy threatens foreign policy interests, citing an obscure provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that empowers Secretary of State Marco Rubio to order a noncitizen deported after such a determination.

Khalil was taken into custody by Homeland Security agents on March 8 after returning to his Columbia-owned apartment from dinner with his wife. Agents took him to lower Manhattan for processing and then to a detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., in the middle of the night, where he spent about eight hours before being transported more than 1,000 miles away to Jena, Louisiana.

Upon his arrest, agents told Khalil’s lawyer he would be taken to 26 Federal Plaza within the Southern District of New York, where the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website placed him for hours after he’d been taken out of the city — a technical lag the government said was due to it being the weekend.

In his Wednesday order, Furman said, “Khalil filed in the wrong district through no fault of his own; his lawyer reasonably relied on the information made available to her by the Government at the time of filing.”

The judge reaffirmed a previous ruling that the government cannot remove Khalil from the country while his legal matters play out.

“In many ways, this is indeed an exceptional case, and there is a need for careful judicial review. Such judicial review is especially critical when, as here, there are colorable claims that the Executive Branch has violated the law or exercised its otherwise lawful authority in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner,” Furman wrote.

The judge noted that dismissing the case, as the Justice Department partly argued for in its opposition to it being brought in Manhattan, “might allow the Government to frustrate Khalil’s effort to obtain judicial review of his claims by removing him from the country before a court could rule.”

“Requiring Khalil to refile his petition in the Western District of Louisiana … would also mean litigating far from his lawyers, from his eight-months-pregnant wife, and from the location where most (if not all) of the events relevant to his petition took place,” he wrote.

Khalil’s lawyers, who have two pending motions seeking his immediate release, say the Trump administration has violated his First and Fifth Amendment rights. They have said they believe the government moved rapidly to get him out of New York and down South the next morning in a bid to target the case to a more conservative court.

“This ruling sends a message loud and clear that Trump and his MAGA cronies cannot just manipulate and abuse the judiciary as they please to suppress the speech of activists for Palestinian rights,” one of Khalil’s attorneys, Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

“This is an important step toward ensuring that the administration’s unconstitutional practices are stopped in their tracks and that Mr. Khalil is reunited with his family in New York. We are ready to defend Mr. Khalil’s rights in New Jersey to secure his immediate release.”

Dr. Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, welcomed the ruling.

“This is a first step, but we need to continue to demand justice for Mahmoud. His unlawful and unjust detention cannot stand. We will not stop fighting until he is home with me,” Abdalla said in a statement.

The student’s detainment on ideological grounds has provoked widespread protests and concerns about the future of the right to free speech under Trump. The president and his senior cabinet members have framed any opposition to the Israeli regime and its military actions as antisemitic and supportive of Hamas, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist group.

Khalil, 30, the grandson of Palestinians who grew up in Syria, played a prominent role in the demonstrations at Columbia last year, acting as a mediator between university staff and students, a role he was selected for based on his previous work at a British embassy and the United Nations.

In a Tuesday night statement, Khalil said he’d been sleeping in cold facilities without a blanket and worried he would miss the birth of his first child.

“The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs,” Khalil said in a statement, which he dictated to his lawyers from detention.

“Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.”

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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