Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student the Trump administration is trying to expel from the U.S. because of his role in campus protests against Israel, appeared on Friday before a judge in New Jersey to debate where his legal fight to be released from federal custody sh ould play out. The government wants the case moved to Louisiana, where Khalil, 30, was sent after being arrested March 8 at his university-owned apartment building in New York. He remains in an immigration detention center there. The judge declined to rule from the bench on Friday but said he’ll have a decision as soon as he’s able. “No matter what happens in court, what’s most important is for all of us to keep up the pressure,” said Ramzi Kassem, one of Khalil’s lawyers, after the hearing. “To let this government know that it cannot suppress speech.” The Trump administration has cited a seldom-invoked statute authorizing the secretary of state to deport noncitizens whose presence in the country threatens U.S. foreign-policy interests. Khalil was born in Syria but is a legal U.S. resident married to an American citizen. The court fight in Newark continues one that began in New York City but was transferred across the Hudson River after a judge determined a federal court in New Jersey was the proper jurisdiction for the lawsuit. Khalil served as a negotiator for pro-Palestinian Columbia students as they bargained with university officials over an end to their campus tent encampment last spring. The university ultimately called in the police to dismantle the encampment and a faction of protesters who seized an administration building. Khalil was not among the people arrested in the Columbia protests and he has not been accused of any crime. But the administration has said it wants to deport Khalil because of his prominent role in the protests, which they say amounted to antisemitic support for Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. People involved in the student-led protests deny that their criticism of Israel or support of Palestinian territorial claims is antisemitic. U.S. officials also have accused Khalil of failing to disclose some of his work history on his immigration paperwork, including work at a British embassy and an internship with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. Other university students and faculty across the country have been arrested by immigration officials, had their visas revoked or been prevented from entering the U.S. because they attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians. Among them are a Gambian student at Cornell University in upstate New York, an Indian scholar at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., a Lebanese doctor at Brown University’s medical school in Rhode Island, a Turkish student at Tufts University in Massachusetts and a Korean student at Columbia who has lived in the country since she was 7. ...read more read less