The Government has affirmed that the Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil intentionally misrepresented the information about his green card application and, therefore, is inadmissible for the United States.
According to the recent judicial presentations, the administration of President Donald Trump said that Khalil did not reveal when requesting his green card last year that his employment from the Syrian office at the British embassy in Beirut was “beyond 2022” and that he was a “political affairs officer” for the relief agency and works of the United Nations for Palestinian refugees from June to November 2023.
“Khalil is now accused as inadmissible at the time of status adjustment because he tried to obtain an immigration benefit for intentional misrepresent fraud of a material fact,” said the lawyers of the administration in the presentation.
Mahmoud Khalil talks to media members about the revolt of the Rafah camp at Columbia University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, in New York City, on June 1, 2024.
Jeenah Moon/Reuters
The Administration also said that Khalil did not tell the Government that he was a member of the disintempted group of the apartheid of the University of Columbia.
The government arrested Khalil on March 8 after invoking a Provision of Immigration Law The fact that they said allows the Secretary of State to revoke the legal status of people whose presence in the country could have “adverse consequences of foreign policy.” The new accusations seem to represent an attempt to strengthen the justification of the Administration to detain Khalil and deny his release.
“The accusations of Khalil’s first amendment are a red sand, and there is an independent base to justify sufficient elimination to exclude Khalil’s constitutional claim,” says the presentation.
“The additional charges that the government presented last week has no merit,” said Marc Van Der Hout, whose legal signature represents Khalil, ABC News in response to a comment request. “They show that the government has no case on this false position that its presence in the United States has adverse consequences of foreign policy. This case is exclusively about the activity and speech protected by the first amendment, and US citizens and permanent residents are free to say what they want about what is happening in the world.”
“Regardless of his accusations related to political discourse, Khalil retained membership in certain organizations and could not reveal continuous employment by Syria’s office at the British embassy in Beirut when he presented his state application adjustment. It is the black letter law that the wrong representations in this context are not protected by the discourse,” said the government in the presentation.
During an informative session of the State Department on Monday, spokesman Tammy Bruce was asked several times about whether the department now saw the previous work for UNRWA as reasons for the disqualification of visa applicants, but she repeatedly refused to respond.
“If you are in your efforts to come to the United States to obtain a visa for any reason, or for a green card, there may be no repercussions, or we have not done things correctly in the past. Many things have changed with the choice of Donald Trump,” Bruce said in a general statement during the information.
The protesters join in support of Mahmoud Khalil outside the Palace of Justice of Thurgood Marshall, during an audience on the arrest of Khalil, in the city of New York, on March 12, 2025.
Charly triballeau/AFP through Getty Images
Khalil, a leader of the protests of the camp in Columbia La Primavera last, was taken in its initial arrest from its student apartment building to 26 Federal Square in the Bajo Manhattan and then to an immigration detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before being transported to a detention center for immigration and customs legal.
Shannon Kingston of ABC News contributed to this report.
