Activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported

Protests in support of Khalil took place last month. Pic/Getty Images

Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be kicked out of the US as a national security risk, an immigration judge in Louisiana has found during a hearing over the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The government's contention that Khalil's presence in the United States posed "potentially serious foreign policy consequences" was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation, Immigration Judge Jamee E Comans said at the conclusion of a hearing in Jena on Saturday. Comans said the government had "established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable".

Lawyers for Khalil said they plan to keep fighting and will seek a waiver. And a federal judge in New Jersey has temporarily barred Khalil's deportation. Khalil, a legal US resident, was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8 in the lobby of his university-owned apartment, the first arrest under President Donald Trump's promised crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza.

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