AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to news here at home, which is clearly directly connected. And that is Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate, Palestine activist, detained by the Trump administration last week. Khalil, who is a Palestinian green card holder, has finally been able to speak to his lawyers, after a federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Homeland Security to allow him to have private calls with his legal team. Prior to this, Khalil had been unable to speak to his lawyers since his arrest on Saturday night, except for a brief call Monday to confirm he had been transferred to a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he is still being held.

At a hearing on Wednesday here in New York’s Manhattan federal court, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman, who temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation earlier this week, extended his order while he considers whether Khalil’s arrest was unconstitutional. The government’s charging document says the Secretary of State Marco Rubio has determined that Khalil’s presence or activities in the United States would have, quote, “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,” unquote.

Outside the courthouse, Khalil’s lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, told reporters what’s happening to Mahmoud Khalil is shocking and outrageous.

RAMZI KASSEM: It is absolutely unprecedented. The grounds that are being cited by the government for purportedly claiming to revoke his green card and putting him in removal proceedings — this is a person who is a lawful permanent resident; this is a U.S. person — those grounds are vague, they are rarely used, and, you know, essentially, they are a form of punishment and retaliation for the exercise of free speech.

AMY GOODMAN: The Trump administration has accused Khalil, without evidence, of being a so-called terrorist sympathizer for participating in Palestinian solidarity protests at Columbia University. In a social media post, President Trump celebrated Khalil’s arrest, saying it was the first of many to come. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Wednesday, “This is not about free speech.” Rubio added, quote, “This is about people who don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with,” end-quote.

In her first media interview, Mahmoud Khalil’s wife Noor Abdalla, who is eight months pregnant, who is a U.S. citizen, told Reuters she had been naive to think Khalil was safe from arrest as a permanent legal resident. She added no one from Columbia University’s administration had contacted her to offer help, although Mahmoud had written to the president of Columbia University a few days before he was arrested, expressing concern and fear and asking for some kind of protection. He was arrested by ICE agents in his Colombia housing.

For more on Mahmoud Khalil’s legal case, we’re joined now by his lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, professor of law at CUNY — that’s the City University of New York — where he founded the legal clinic CLEAR. The acronym stands for Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility.

Ramzi, thank you for joining us again. You were just in court yesterday. Explain what the judge ruled.

RAMZI KASSEM: Thank you, Amy.

Yeah, yesterday was an important day in court. As you mentioned, the judge has prohibited the government from deporting Khalil until further order of the court. So, that’s important. The judge also agreed with us, the lawyers for Khalil, that it was imperative for the government to respond to our motion to bring Khalil back to New York. And so the government has to respond to that motion by tomorrow.

And the government also last night moved to change venue, meaning that the government believes Khalil’s habeas corpus case, the case that he brought in federal court, should not be in federal court in New York, but it should be in federal court in Louisiana. And, you know, that’s not really a surprise to us, because, of course, it’s been very clear from the beginning that the government’s strategy is to cut Khalil off not just from access to the court here in New York, not just from access to his legal team, but from access to his support base, to his community, to his family, including his expecting wife. And that’s the only conceivable reason why the government would not have held him in New York or New Jersey as they typically do, and move him a thousand miles away merely hours after he files a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of his detention.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Ramzi Kassem, were you able to speak with Mahmoud yesterday after the judge’s ruling?

RAMZI KASSEM: Yeah, Amy, we were. So, when we were in court yesterday, we asked the judge to order the government to allow us to have a privileged conversation with our client in Louisiana. Since we brought suit on his behalf and filed the motion to have him brought back home to New York City, we haven’t been able to speak to him. One of the lawyers on the team was able to have an unprivileged call. But as most of your listeners and viewers know, you know, those calls, the unprivileged calls, the regular calls and visits, can be monitored or recorded by the government. So the judge ordered the government to allow us to have a privileged conversation. We had the first privileged conversation with Mahmoud last night.

And, you know, of course, I’m limited in what I can say about that privileged conversation, but I can tell you that, thankfully, he is in good spirits, he is in fighting spirits. He appreciates all the support that he’s received, the fact that there were thousands of people, certainly hundreds, I would say over a thousand people, outside the courthouse yesterday massed to protest in solidarity with him and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

AMY GOODMAN: The government is trying to deport Mahmoud based on a rarely used provision of federal immigration law that allows the secretary of state to remove individuals whose presence it believes has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,” unquote. Can you explain this extremely rare provision? The only previous time it was used before was in 1995, according to recent press reports. According to The New York Times, that was an attempt to deport a former Mexican government official. Ironically, the judge who struck it down as unconstitutional in 1996 was Maryanne Trump Barry, President Trump’s sister, who was a federal judge in New Jersey. Can you talk about this?

RAMZI KASSEM: Yeah. So, that provision has an interesting history, to say the least. It’s a provision that is now understood to have been enacted primarily to target Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors who came to the United States and were suspected, often wrongly suspected, of being Soviet agents. So, that’s the origin story of this particular piece of federal legislation.

And that origin story is the reason why Congress came back in and amended it, saying, “Well, you can’t use this law to punish people for their views and their speech. And if you want to do that, then it requires a personal certification by the secretary of state for why that person’s presence and their speech poses a compelling risk to U.S. foreign policy interests.” And it also requires the secretary of state to notify Congress with supporting evidence for why they’re making this move. So, it is an exceedingly rarely used provision. And it certainly does not trump the Constitution and Mr. Khalil’s First Amendment rights.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what are you calling for now, as we wrap up?

RAMZI KASSEM: Well, we’re calling for what we’ve always called for, and what Mahmoud and his family and his supporters and their supporters have always called for. Any day Mahmoud spends in detention, whether it’s in Louisiana or elsewhere, is a day too long. We want to bring him back to New York. We want to bring him back to his family. And so, we want him back here and freed as soon as possible. And we’re pursuing that through every available avenue, with the support of hundreds of thousands of people.

This idea that the movement in support of Palestinian lives and dignity, that criticism of U.S. foreign policy in Palestine and support for Israel is this fringe movement that is driven by foreign actors is a falsehood. Of course, there are noncitizens and green card holders, like Khalil, involved in the movement, but this is an American movement. And the government is in denial about that. And that’s going to backfire, possibly in court, but definitely in the court of public opinion.

AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Ramzi Kassem, you’re also an expert on Guantánamo. It is very interesting that in our headlines we just reported that the Trump administration has just removed the migrants it sent to Guantánamo, and sent them to Louisiana, the state that Mahmoud is also in.

RAMZI KASSEM: Yeah, and, you know, this is just one example — right? — of this administration overreaching and having to back off because of the intense backlash through organizing, through legal means, in the media. And we hope that the same will happen in Mahmoud’s case soon.

AMY GOODMAN: Ramzi Kassem, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of law at City University of New York — that’s CUNY Law School. He founded and co-directs CLEAR, a legal clinic. CLEAR joined with the Center for Constitutional Rights to file a federal habeas petition in the Southern District of New York challenging Mahmoud Khalil’s detention. We’ll keep you updated. Stay with us.