The immigration judge was looking out over her courtroom. Mahmoud Khalil was sitting at a table next to his lawyers as they tried to convince her not to order him deported to the Middle East.
"His life is at stake, your honor," one of them, Marc Van Der Hout, told the judge.
Khalil was focused and stern. But he kept getting distracted. His wife was sitting in the public gallery a few feet away, cradling their tiny newborn son, Deen. The baby was cooing. Everyone could hear. And each time, Khalil couldn't resist a smile.
It was a touch of levity in a courtroom otherwise heavy with the gravity of what was being discussed: Khalil's fear that if he's deported, the state of Israel might try to kill him.
It was a touch of levity in a courtroom otherwise heavy with the gravity of what was being discussed: Khalil's fear that if he's deported, the state of Israel might try to kill him.
Last month, Judge Jamee Comans ruled that Khalil could be deported because as an immigration judge she had no authority to question Secretary of State Marco Rubio's determination that his pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University was antisemitic and threatened U.S. foreign policy goals.
Unless his lawyers believed he qualified for special protection like asylum, the judge said, she would order him expelled either to Syria, where he was born and raised in a camp for Palestinian refugees, or to Algeria, which gave him a passport because of his mother's ancestry.