Judge Orders Family Visit for Detained Columbia Student Mahmoud Khalil

Court-Ordered Family Visit

• 📌 A judge has granted a family visit for detained Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, allowing him to meet his wife for the first time since his March arrest.
• 🤝 The visit is set to include meetings with his attorneys and his wife; it remains uncertain if their newborn son will be present.

Legal Battles for Mahmoud Khalil

• ⚖️ Two primary legal cases surround Khalil's detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
• 🗣️ One federal district case in New Jersey questions whether the Trump administration violated Khalil's free speech rights by targeting him for deportation due to his activism.
• 🌍 An immigration court case in Louisiana focuses on whether the administration has sufficient legal grounds for his deportation, with a judge previously ruling that the claim of threatening foreign policy was sufficient.
• ⚖️ A pending motion in the Louisiana case will decide if Khalil should be deported for allegedly committing immigration fraud, a second deportation ground cited by the administration.
• 🛡️ Another motion addresses Khalil's lawyers' application for asylum, seeking protection from deportation due to potential persecution in his home country.

Deportation Flight to South Sudan

• ✈️ Immigration lawyers informed a judge that the Trump administration was preparing to deport several migrants to South Sudan.
• 🌍 The Department of Homeland Security confirmed an eight-migrant deportation flight from Texas, seemingly bound for South Sudan, though the migrants were from various countries including Mexico and Vietnam.
• 🚫 A federal judge in Massachusetts ordered legal screenings for these migrants to assess risks in South Sudan, citing a violation of a previous order requiring notification and contestation rights for third-country deportations.
• 📍 The flight reportedly landed in Djibouti, where the migrants remain, with the possibility of diversion back to the US or continued stay in the East African country.