Columbia University student and the US government spar over his detention in Louisiana

FILE – Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is on the Columbia University campus in New York at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on April 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, file)
The federal government and a Columbia University student threatened with deportation for his role in campus protests against Israel have been sparring in court over the Trump administration’s move to ship him halfway across the country to an immigration lockup in Louisiana.
The government says he could not be detained at an immigration facility near where he was originally arrested in part because of a bedbug infestation, so they sent him to Louisiana. The student, Mahmoud Khalil, says there was no such discussion of bedbugs and he feared he was being immediately deported.
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Khalil said in a declaration filed in Manhattan federal court Monday that while he was held overnight at a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey,