The Trump administration will face two temporary restraining order hearings on Tuesday regarding its efforts to root out antisemitism across U.S. college campuses.
The first case involves Mahmoud Khalil, one of the ringleaders of the Columbia University protests who was detained by ICE earlier this month and who the Trump administration is trying to deport, while the second case involves Cornell University student Momodou Taal and two others who argue their free speech is being attacked for taking part in the campus protests.
In the Khalil case, a federal New York City judge will hear a request by Khalil for a temporary restraining order to prevent Columbia University from handing over Khalil’s disciplinary records – as well as other student protesters’ records – to the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
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U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian last week ordered Columbia University to refrain from handing over the records until he holds a hearing today. The committee sent a letter last month demanding that Columbia and Barnard College provide the records or risk billions of dollars in federal funding.
The Department of Homeland Security said that it arrested Khalil — who is a Palestinian raised in Syria and a permanent U.S. resident — to protect U.S. national security and claimed that Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
The hearing comes as the Trump administration has also accused Khalil of failing to disclose his employment with a United Nations Palestinian relief agency on his visa application, alleging this omission warrants deportation.
Meanwhile, Taal and two other plaintiffs are challenging President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting antisemitism on campus and his administration’s efforts seeking to deport protesters. Taal, along with Cornell student Sriram Parasurama and Professor Mũkoma Wa Ngũgĩ, say that the orders seek to deny the right to free speech of all non-citizens.
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Tall also filed an emergency motion to prevent an attempt to detain or deport him ahead of the hearing scheduled in Syracuse, New York, before U.S. District Judge Elizabeth C. Coombe.
Trump’s Department of Justice is seeking to have Taal, who is in the U.S. on a visa, surrender to immigration authorities, according to court documents. Taal holds dual citizenship in the United Kingdom and Gambia.
Taal, who has been an anti-Israel student activist since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, has praised the “resistance” against Israel several times on his X account. Despite being accepted on a student visa in 2022, Taal has also posted about his “hatred” for the U.S. and called for “the end of the US empire.”
Earlier this month, the Trump administration pulled $400 million in research grants and other funding over how Columbia University handled protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. In order to consider restoring those funds and billions more in future grants, federal officials demanded nine separate changes to the university’s academic and security policies, including overhauling its rules for protests and student discipline.
Trump in January signed an executive order on “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.” The directive gave all federal agencies a 60-day window to identify civil and criminal authorities available to combat antisemitism and deport anti-Jewish activists who broke any laws.
The Justice Department then formed a multi-agency taskforce to combat antisemitism.
Fox News’ Taylor Penley, Kendall Gastelu, Alexis McAdams, Jamie Joseph and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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