NEW YORK — Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student who the Trump administration is seeking to deport for protesting against Israel’s bombing of Gaza, are set to go up against the government in New Jersey on Friday.

It’s been almost three weeks since Khalil, 30, a lawful U.S. resident, was taken into custody by Homeland Security agents after returning home to his Columbia-owned apartment from dinner with his heavily pregnant wife on March 8.

The Trump administration has targeted the student from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs for his participation in campus protests last year against Israeli military activity and the university’s investment ties to the Israeli regime, in which he primarily acted as a negotiator between students and university staff. The green card holder who had been set to graduate in May grew up in a refugee camp for Palestinians in Syria and has been legally living in the U.S. since December 2022.

Khalil, whose arrest has set off widespread protests and concern from free speech advocates on both sides of the political aisle, hasn’t been charged with a crime. Instead, in an unprecedented use of an obscure provision in the law granting sweeping deportation powers to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the government alleges his advocacy for Palestinian civilians could have unfavorable foreign policy consequences.

Friday’s hearing is expected to address the government’s renewed effort to get Khalil’s habeas corpus case — which challenges the legality of his detention — moved to Louisiana.

Within hours of his arrest, agents brought Khalil from lower Manhattan to a private detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The following day, a Sunday, they put him on a plane to the Jena, Louisiana detention center more than 1,000 miles away.

The government has claimed that agents took Khalil from New Jersey to Louisiana because there were bed bugs at the former facility. Khalil’s lawyers say it was an effort to confine any challenges to his detention to one of the most conservative districts in the U.S. and that agents were providing real-time updates to the White House, signaling the orders came from the top.

They have two motions pending, one seeking his immediate release so he can be with his wife when she gives birth, which she’s expected to do “imminently,” and another requesting that he be transported back to a facility in the tristate area.

Last week, Manhattan federal judge Jesse Furman transferred Khalil’s case from New York to New Jersey, finding it was the correct jurisdiction as that was where Khalil was when his lawyers filed it.

After initially getting the case, Furman also prohibited the government from removing Khalil from the country while his legal matters played out, which was reaffirmed by the New Jersey judge now handling it, Michael Farbiarz. Khalil has an immigration case separately playing out in Louisiana.

The Trump administration has continued arguing that Louisiana is the only district with jurisdiction. In recent filings, the government injected more allegations into its legal arguments in furtherance of Khalil’s deportation, including claims he’d withheld information on his green card application about working for the British embassy in Lebanon, which the student’s lawyers say are untrue.

Khalil’s legal team told The New York Daily News on Thursday that the arguments were desperate.

“The government is grasping at straws to try and recast what it did, when it’s absolutely clear that this entire endeavor is simply retaliation against him for speaking on an issue of public concern and an attempt to try and silence other people in the same position,” said Bobby Hodgson, Assistant Legal Director of the NYCLU.

The Trump administration has targeted several more students since Khalil, accusing them without evidence of being antisemitic and supporting Hamas by advocating for Palestinians trapped in the war-torn region.

ICE agents took Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Tufts University, off the street without warning on Wednesday. Ozturk was seemingly targeted for writing an op-ed criticizing her school for refusing to recognize support for Palestinians from students and faculty.

At a news conference Thursday, Rubio appeared to suggest that noncitizens in the U.S. don’t have a right to free speech.

“We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses,” Rubio said Thursday. “You decide to go and do that, we’re going to take it away.”

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