US says Syria’s transitional government a possible step forward

My client, Mahmoud Khalil, is a 30-year-old Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University. Today, he should be at home with his wife in New York City, awaiting the birth of their first child next month. Instead, he’s locked up in a cell in Louisiana, 1,400 miles away.
On Saturday, March 8, armed federal agents arrested Mr. Khalil in the lobby of his apartment building. A publicly released video captures the moment when they cuffed him in front of his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. They told Mr. Khalil’s lawyer over the phone that they were acting on an order to revoke his student visa. When his lawyer told them that he was, in fact, a legal permanent resident with a green card, the agents said the government had revoked that as well.
After sleeping on the floor in a facility in lower Manhattan, Mr. Khalil was transferred to an immigration jail in New Jersey. Then, after his lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court challenging the legality of his detention, the Department of Homeland Security abruptly flew him to an immigration jail in rural Louisiana.
The Trump administration is seeking to deport Mr. Khalil simply because he is a dedicated Palestinian human-rights defender who has spoken out against Israel’s assault on Gaza, and against the U.S. and Columbia University’s complicity.
In the aftermath of the arrest, Mr. Khalil has received an extraordinary amount of support from people across the political spectrum because they see the Trump administration’s actions for what they are: a wholesale assault on the First Amendment and the cherished right to freedom of speech.
In an effort to punish Mr. Khalil for his beliefs, the Trump administration is exploiting a vague provision in a 1952 immigration law (the Immigration and Nationality Act) that gives the secretary of state the authority to deport people if there are