Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil on Thursday said that they would seek testimony from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who argues that though Mr. Khalil committed no crimes, his very presence in the United States enables antisemitism.
Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who led pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the campus last year, has been detained by the government for more than a month. He has a hearing in immigration court in Louisiana on Friday where, his lawyers acknowledged, it is unlikely that the judge will grant their request to hear from Mr. Rubio.
But they said that the lack of justification for Mr. Khalil’s detention other than Mr. Rubio’s assertion made it all the more essential that the secretary be compelled to answer questions in a deposition.
“Mr. Khalil has the right under due process to confront the evidence against him, and that’s what we want to examine Secretary of State Rubio about,” said Marc Van Der Hout, one of his lawyers.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawyers’ remarks came in a news briefing a day after the Department of Homeland Security submitted evidence in its case to deport Mr. Khalil. The case has raised major questions about free speech and due process during President Trump’s second term.
Mr. Khalil’s lawyers said that the evidence that the department submitted — including an undated memo from Mr. Rubio — provided no additional justification for the Trump administration’s argument for Mr. Khalil’s deportation.
The memo, first obtained by The Associated Press, did not accuse Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident who is Palestinian and married to an American citizen, of criminal conduct. Instead, as has been reported, the administration cited a seldom-used statute that allows the secretary of state to start deportation proceedings against anyone whom he can reasonably consider a threat to United States foreign policy, in this case a policy of combating antisemitism.
Mr. Khalil was highly visible during the campus protests at Columbia last year, as he represented a coalition of student organizations in negotiations with the school.
In public statements, the Homeland Security Department has said that Mr. Khalil is “aligned to Hamas,” while the White House has accused him of “siding with terrorists.” But even with the publication of Mr. Rubio’s memo, no evidence has been offered publicly that would substantiate those allegations.
Homeland Security has also submitted evidence related to other allegations against Mr. Khalil, which concern whether he disclosed his membership in several organizations, including a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, when he applied to become a permanent U.S. resident last March.
A spokeswoman for the department declined to provide that, or any other, evidence, noting that “immigration court dockets are not available to the public.”
Mr. Van Der Hout was dismissive of those allegations, calling them “bogus.”
“The Rubio letter is the only piece of evidence going to the main charge in this case,” he said.
Mr. Khalil was arrested last month in Manhattan and was quickly transferred to Louisiana, where he has been held since. He and his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, are expecting a child this month.
The judge overseeing his immigration case, Jamee E. Comans, has signaled that she does not believe it is her role to decide the constitutionality of the statute that Mr. Rubio is citing. Instead, at Friday’s hearing, she is expected to determine whether the evidence the government provided meets the requirements of the rarely used law it is citing — and thus whether Mr. Khalil can be deported.
Even if she allows the government to deport Mr. Khalil, he would not immediately be removed from the country.
While his immigration case is proceeding in Louisiana, efforts to fight the constitutionality of his detention are playing out in front of a federal judge in New Jersey. That judge, Michael Farbiarz, has ordered the government not to remove Mr. Khalil until he rules otherwise.
