Judge orders Mahmoud Khalil's case transferred from Louisiana to New Jersey

A US court has rejected the Trump administration's bid to dismiss Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil's legal challenge to his detention and has ordered the case transferred to New Jersey.

Mr Khalil, a US permanent resident and Columbia University graduate, was detained on 8 March by immigration officers and faces deportation for his role in 2024 campus protests against the war in Gaza.

His legal team had pushed to bring him back from a detention centre in Louisiana where he was sent after his arrest in New York.

In a letter from his detention facility on Tuesday, Mr Khalil described himself as a "political prisoner" targeted for "exercising my right to free speech".

Mr Khalil's arrest has been linked to President Donald Trump's promise to crack down on student demonstrators he accuses of "un-American activity".

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained him at his university-owned Manhattan apartment and initially placed him in a New Jersey immigration facility before transferring him to a detention centre in Jena, Louisiana, according to ICE records.

The Trump administration had asked the New York court to dismiss Mr Khalil's challenge or move it to Louisiana, home to one of the nation's most conservative appellate courts.

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Rejecting the administration's bid on Wednesday, District Judge Jesse Furman ruled that, since the district of New Jersey was "the one and only district in which Khalil could have filed his petition" seeking his release from detention, the case must be transferred there rather than Louisiana.

The judge also upheld his 10 March order barring Mr Khalil's deportation while the case continues, but did not rule on his lawyers' request for immediate release.

The US justice department has not commented on the ruling.

Mr Khalil's lawyer Samah Sisay said in a statement on Wednesday that the government moved him to Louisiana to avoid having the case heard in New York or New Jersey.

"Mr Khalil should be free and home with his wife awaiting the birth of their first child, and we will continue to do everything possible to make that happen," Ms Sisay told Reuters.

Mr Khalil's wife, who is a US citizen, is eight months pregnant.

His lawyers have argued that he was exercising free speech rights to demonstrate in support of Palestinians in Gaza and against US support for Israel. They accused the government of "open repression of student activism and political speech".

Trump has previously stated that foreign students found to be "terrorist sympathisers" would face deportation.

Mr Khalil has not been charged with any crime.

Meanwhile, another case has roiled immigration activists after the arrest of Jeanette Vizguerra, an undocumented woman in Denver who made national headlines during President Trump's first term.

She was scheduled for deportation in 2017 but took shelter in a church basement in Denver, hoping she would be protected at a house of worship. She was later granted a one-year-stay from deportation by the Biden administration in 2021.

She moved to the US, without proper documentation, from Mexico City in 1997, and she has been considered a voice for the immigrant community for more than two decades.

Ms Vizguerra was taken into custody on Monday morning by federal agents outside a Target store where she worked, CBS News, the BBC's partner in the US, reported.

Reports of her detention stirred a criticism from Democrats and immigrant-rights supporters, who gathered to protest outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the Denver suburb of Aurora on Tuesday morning.

Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver called her arrest a "Putin-style persecution of political dissidents" under the guise of immigration enforcement.

"This a mom of American citizens who works at Target. This is not something that makes our community safer," he added.

Confirming her arrest in a statement to CBS News, ICE said Ms Vizguerra has two misdemeanour convictions.

"Vizguerra is a convicted criminal alien from Mexico who has a final order of deportation issued by a federal immigration judge," the statement said. "She illegally entered the United States near El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 24, 1997, and has received legal due process in U.S. immigration court."

Protesters and family members are keeping a vigil outside the immigration detention centre in Aurora where she is being held.