Trump administration didn’t have arrest warrant for Mahmoud Khalil, citing ‘flight risk’

The Trump administration said in court filings that it detained Mahmoud Khalil without an arrest warrant, fearing he would be a “flight risk.”

Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist, is facing deportation after the Trump administration revoked his permanent residency. It said his involvement in fiery anti-Israel protests on the university’s campus, where activists distributed flyers written by Hamas state media, posed a foreign policy threat to the United States.

While the Department of Homeland Security said in a court filing Thursday that Khalil was detained without an arrest warrant, it argued that “exigent circumstances” mandated such action.

“The supervisory agent asked the respondent to cooperate while they attempted to verify his identity, but the respondent stated that he would not cooperate and that

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