Deportation could be a death sentence, says Mahmoud Khalil in asylum saying: NPR

Jena, La. – The immigration judge was over her courtroom. Mahmoud Khalil was sitting at a table next to his lawyers when they tried to convince them not to deport him to the Middle East.

“His life is at stake, your honor,” said one of them, Marc van der Hout, the judge.

Khalil was focused and strict. But he was repeatedly distracted. His wife was sitting in the public gallery a few meters away and weighing her tiny newborn son Deen. The baby struggled. Everyone could hear. And every time Khalil couldn't resist a smile.

It was a touch of lightness in a courtroom that is otherwise difficult, with the heavy thing about what was discussed: Khalil's fear that the condition of Israel could try to kill him when it is deported.

Judge Jamee Comans decided last month Khalil could be deported Because as an immigration judge, she had no authority to ask Foreign Minister Marco Rubio that his propalestinian activism at Columbia University was anti-Semitic and threatened the US foreign policy goals. Unless his lawyers believed that he had qualified for special protection like Asylum, the judge said that she would either refer him to Syria, where he was born in a camp for Palestinian refugees or to Algeria, which gave him a passport because of his mother's descent.

On Thursday, over 10 strenuous hours behind the barbed wire of the Central Louisiana Ice Processing Center, in which Khalil is recorded, his lawyers asked experts through video conference to convince the judge to grant him asylum and free him. Here is the heart of your argument: the wrong of the Trump government, say, and public accusations that Khalil is an anti-Semite and terrorist sympathizer, have transformed him into a top-class critic of Israel that is known all over the world. For this reason, he said that if he was deported to the Middle East, he could meet Israel.

“It could be enough of assassination, kidnapping, torture,” said Khalil in more than three hours of statements that remembered important moments in his life, from his earliest memory in a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, Syria, which had missed the birth of his son in the detention center in Syria because he was closed from his house in the detention center of 1,400 miles because he was in a New York house in a New York house in a New York house in a New York house in the New York houses.

President Trump, State Secretary Rubio and other government officials “negotiated me a terrorist, a terrorist sympathizer or a Hamas supporter who could not be removed from the truth. I am advocating for human rights. I never carried out anti -Semitic activities,” said Khalil.

He challenged the state lawyers who were a few meters away from him to present evidence on the contrary. “I did not become a celebrity – someone who has a goal on my back through this misconception. This means where I go in the world, I will have this goal.”

Judge Comans said it would take a few weeks before she would make a decision about Khalil's asylum claim. But whatever she decides will not be the last word for his fate. A federal judge in the northeast has temporarily prevented the government from deporting it while considering whether it has violated the constitutional law of Khalil on freedom of expression. Khalil's lawyers pursue every legal option to stop his deportation and restore its Green Card, and, if necessary, said that they will go all the way to the Supreme Court.

During the hearing on Thursday on Thursday, his lawyers interviewed several experts in the Middle East, why they thought that Khalil would be at risk if he was sent back there.

“The United States described it as a pro Hamas agent,” said Muriam Haleh Davis, professor of the Middle East at UC Santa Cruz. She said Israel historically targeted Hamas employees because of assassinations.

Khaled Elgindy, an expert for Israeli-Palestinian affairs at Georgetown University, told the court that Khalil's newly increased profile as a critic of bombing Israel in gaza strips.

Khalil has achieved the ability to influence the Americans, said Elgindy. “So he is a direct and strong threat to the goals of Israel. If it can be attacked by the United States government, the Israelis would certainly perceive it in a similar light.”

Lisa Wedeen, a Syria expert at the University of Chicago, said about the ease with which Israel could aim at Khalil, since the political instability of Syria and Israel's recent expansion of the territory in the country controlled by him controlled.

“My biggest concern is that they will disappear,” said Weeden, because “the latitude and impunity that Israel can operate in Syria”.

During his certificate, Khalil said that, in addition to Israel, he also feared that he has also remained with former Bashar al-Assad employees, who has stayed with the country since the government's decline last December when he returned to Syria. Khalil, who is now 30 years old, said that he organized protests against Assad as a teenager in Syria and fled the country in 2013 after two cousins ​​with which he often protested were arrested.

The Department of Homeland Security has not referred to its own witnesses to question Khalil's assertion of fear. It is unclear whether it has submitted a written certificate.

But when he examined Khalil, Numa Metoyer, a lawyer for the department, asked questions about the examination of the danger that Khalil was actually exposed.

If he feared the deportation to Syria, asked him Metoyer why he visited the country in January?

“Before March 8, it was different than after March 8th,” said Khalil and moved into Call him A “radical foreign pro-Hamas student”.

“Because they were made aware of here in this case, have you now been attacked by the Israeli government?” Asked metoyer.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately answer questions about Khalil's asylum claim. After the hearing, his lawyers said they hoped that the judge would consider it “open”.

Khalil also did during his certificate.

“Although I have no confidence in the immigration system,” he said, “I hope that my presence here is not just a formality.”