In a Courtroom Friday, I Saw Firsthand Just How Abnormal This Moment Has Become

Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team outside the courthouse Friday. Aymann Ismail

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If you needed a gauge for how abnormal this moment has become in American courts, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in Newark last Friday was a good place to start.

The first thing I noticed was how overwhelmed the court staff appeared. I’ve come to this building before, but I had never seen the federal courthouse like this. People poked their heads up from the security station, trying to get a glimpse of the long line of broadcast cameras on tripods that had already formed, ready to go, even though the day’s biggest hearing wasn’t scheduled to begin for another hour. Across the river, in Manhattan, the federal courthouse’s security might have been more prepared for a case like this. But not here. Soon, strips of painter’s tape came out to affix our press badges to each device not allowed in to try to keep track of everyone’s property amid the chaos.

By the time I made it through the checkpoint, the main courtroom was nearly full. I slipped in just before the doors closed. Outside, a crowd of protesters was chanting “Free Mahmoud Now.” Inside, you couldn’t hear them; the courtroom was still. But there was clearly anxiety in the air.

The person at the center of it all—Mahmoud Khalil—wasn’t even in the room.

Khalil, a permanent legal resident, had suddenly been whisked away by federal agents with barely any justification at all several weeks ago. In the video of his arrest, he appeared calm, perhaps performatively so, for the sake of his wife, who was recording it. She was eight months pregnant at the time. She was there Friday, two rows ahead of me, and for a while, all eyes seemed to be on her.

Khalil still hasn’t been charged with a crime. His detention is based solely on a broad and rare assertion made by the newly minted secretary of state, Marco Rubio, that his presence poses a threat to U.S. security.

But at issue in the courtroom that day was not Khalil’s guilt or innocence in any wrongdoing, but where his case should be heard. We were here because Khalil had been briefly held at a newly opened Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark after his Manhattan arrest, but before he was moved to Louisiana. (For a time, neither his wife nor his legal team knew where he was at all.) Who had the authority to hear Khalil’s challenge to his detention: New Jersey, where his habeas petition was filed, or Louisiana, where he’s now detained?

What the government wanted was clear. Its lawyers asked that the case be dismissed in New Jersey and refiled in Louisiana, where the Trump administration apparently expects more favorable treatment. “Mr. Khalil was only here for a few hours,” August Flentje, a Justice Department lawyer, told the judge. “For jurisdictional certainty, the case belongs in Louisiana. That is our bottom line.” He sparred with Judge Michael Farbiarz, who got laughter in the court at one point after informing the government attorney he had “done his reading.” He pointed to the Supreme Court case Ex parte Endo, which dealt with the incarceration of a Japanese American in the 1940s.

But the mood shifted when Baher Azmy, Khalil’s lead lawyer and the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, was asked to address the court. His tone was charged. “The government’s position is radical,” he said. “Liberty is at stake.”

He accused the administration of manufacturing new limitations on habeas corpus to suit its goals of extrajudicially deporting a person to quell political dissent. He described a government bouncing a body from jurisdiction to jurisdiction not to pursue justice but to delay it. “The longer we wait,” he said, “the more chill on free speech. People are afraid they’ll be picked up off the street.”

I wondered what Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, was thinking as these questions were dissected and debated. She wore a long coat. Her hijab masked her peripheral vision. I had heard she might make a statement. She didn’t. She didn’t need to. Her very presence—visibly pregnant—was a statement in itself. And as the back-and-forth dragged on, the odds that her husband would be present at their child’s birth seemed to slip away.

Azmy continued to stress the urgency of the case, pressing the judge to recognize that Khalil’s detention is punishment already. After more than an hour of arguments, the hearing was adjourned. The judge acknowledged the urgency, even echoed it. But he made no commitment about when he would issue a decision.

As the courtroom emptied and reporters reclaimed their painter’s-taped devices, the case spilled back into the street. The first to exit were the DOJ attorneys, who moved quickly to another building while reporters shouted questions and photographers chased after them. Then Khalil’s wife emerged through a side door, covering her face. Members of his legal team waved their arms and used their coats to shield her from the many photographers chasing after her.

Outside the courtroom, Azmy stopped for the press. He framed the case not as a jurisdictional question. He called it a test of democracy.

“This is not any routine immigration case,” Azmy said. “This is a case where the United States government has created a policy targeting Palestinian activists, and specifically Mahmoud Khalil, for arrest, detention, and potential removal because the United States government disagrees with his constitutionally protected right to dissent from U.S. foreign policy.

“They are using the device of moving somebody around to further that whole scheme,” he added.

When a reporter asked about the government’s accusation that Khalil supported Hamas, Azmy bristled. “This individual was trusted by Columbia University to be a negotiator and a mediator,” he said. “This is a sort of cheap Red Scare. Like calling anyone a Communist in the ’50s or a radical in the ’20s. And we’re not going to fall for it.”

When the reporter pressed again, Azmy snapped. “It’s a total, complete fabrication. I’m not sure why you’re following the trap of a government that seeks to repress free speech and make up claims to justify detention. It’s false. Don’t fall for it,” he said. “The secretary of state takes the astonishing position that if he thinks someone’s dissent is contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States, he thinks he can arrest, detain, and try to deport somebody. And that’s a maximum level of repression we haven’t seen since the Red Scare.”

Ramzi Kassem, a law professor and part of Khalil’s legal team, has been defending Arab and Muslim Americans for decades. “I think it’s a turning point for our society,” he told me after the hearing. “All of the approaches, tactics, and strategies that have been honed against Black people and Muslim people, and now we’re seeing them expanded to student activists. This is a blueprint.

“This template to detain and silence pro-Palestinian speech will be used for every other issue they disagree with,” he added, “whether it’s LGBTQ rights, racial justice, reproductive rights. Whatever it is, they will use this approach to silence people.”

I asked Kassem whether he thought Trump was succeeding. “I think it’s backfiring,” he said. “It’s really not silencing people. But that’s the aim. And they’ve been pretty transparent about it.”

He mentioned other cases, like Rumeysa Ozturk and Yunseo Chung, both students whose visas were revoked for political speech. “In Chung’s case, the court prohibited ICE from detaining her pending a decision on the constitutional questions. That was a huge step in the right direction. And we’re hoping for another one,” he said.

But inside that gold-trimmed courtroom on Friday, under a velvet curtain, it was hard not to notice that the question of what crime Khalil is accused of committing had never even been asked. He won’t appear in immigration court again until April 8, perhaps after his baby is born. As Kassem pointed out, the Trump administration was not only deploying these tactics against legal residents but openly gloating about them, all the while defying any court to stop it. The hearing in Newark was jurisdictional, but it felt nothing short of existential.