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louisiana
Slamming 'Fascist Tactics' of Trump, Mahmoud Khalil Fights Judge's Deportation Decision
A member of his legal team noted that "the immigration prosecutor, judge, and jailer all answer to Donald Trump, and that one man is eager to weaponize the system in a desperate bid to silence Mahmoud Khalil."
Sep 17, 2025
Mahmoud Khalil and his lawyers on Wednesday affirmed their plan to fight an immigration court ruling that paves the way for his deportation, months after plainclothes agents accosted the lawful permanent resident and his US citizen wife outside their home in New York City.
"It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech. Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again," Khalil said in a statement.
"When their first effort to deport me was set to fail, they resorted to fabricating baseless and ridiculous allegations in a bid to silence me for speaking out and standing firmly with Palestine, demanding an end to the ongoing genocide," he continued. "Such fascist tactics will never deter me from continuing to advocate for my people's liberation."
While President Donald Trump has a broad goal of mass deportations, his administration has targeted Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student with a valid green card, and other foreign scholars in the United States for criticizing Israel's US-backed genocide in the Gaza Strip.
"We have witnessed a constant lack of humanity and allegiance to the law throughout proceedings in this farcical Louisiana immigration court."
Federal agents arrested Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, in March. He wasn't released from a federal immigration facility until June. During his 104-day detention, his wife, Noor Abdalla, gave birth to their son. Over the past six months, he has been a part of multiple legal battles: his challenge to being deported in a Louisiana immigration court; a civil rights case before US District Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey; and a fight for $20 million in damages.
In a Wednesday letter to Farbiarz—an appointee of former President Joe Biden who has already blocked his deportation while the civil rights case proceeds—Khalil's legal team explained that on September 12, Jamee Comans, an immigration judge (IJ), "issued three separate orders denying petitioner's (1) motion for an extension of time, (2) motion to change venue, and (3) application for a waiver, without conducting an evidentiary hearing."
"In denying petitioner's request for a waiver absent a hearing, as well as his motions for extension of time and for change of venue, the IJ ordered petitioner removed to Algeria or Syria... while reaffirming her decisions denying petitioner any form of relief from removal," the letter says. Khalil now has 30 days from September 12 to start an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA).
Noting "statements targeting petitioner by name for retaliation and deportation made by the president and several senior US government officials," Khalil's lawyers "have ample reason to expect that the BIA process—and an affirmance of the IJ's determination—will be swift," the letter continued. "Upon affirmance by the BIA, petitioner will lose his lawful permanent resident status, including his right to reside and work in the United States, and have a final order of removal against him."
"Compared to other courts of appeals, including those in the 3rd and 2nd Circuits, the 5th Circuit almost never grants stays of removal to noncitizens pursuing petitions for review of BIA decisions. As a result, the only meaningful impediment to petitioner's physical removal from the United States would be this court's important order prohibiting removal during the pendency of his federal habeas case," the letter points out, referring to Farbiarz's previous intervention.
Khalil is represented by Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR), Van Der Hout LLP, Washington Square Legal Services, and the national, New Jersey, New York, and Louisiana arms of the ACLU.
"When the immigration prosecutor, judge, and jailer all answer to Donald Trump, and that one man is eager to weaponize the system in a desperate bid to silence Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident whose only supposed sin is that he stands against an ongoing genocide in Palestine, this is the result," CLEAR co-director Ramzi Kassem said Wednesday. "A plain-as-day First Amendment violation that also puts on sharp display the rapidly free-falling credibility of the entire US immigration system."
In addition to calling out the Trump administration for its unconstitutional conduct, Khalil's lawyers expressed some optimism.
"We have witnessed a constant lack of humanity and allegiance to the law throughout proceedings in this farcical Louisiana immigration court, and the immigration judge's September 12 decision is just the most recent example of what occurs when the system requires an arbiter that is anything but neutral to do the administration's bidding," said Johnny Sinodis, a partner at Van Der Hout LLP. "As with other illegal efforts by the government, this too will be challenged and overcome."
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Noem Says Angola Chosen for Migrant Detention Because of Its 'Notorious' Violent History
The Louisiana state prison has been known for brutal working conditions, solitary confinement, and violence.
Sep 04, 2025
As a court in Fort Myers, Florida prepared to hold the first hearing on the legal rights of immigrants detained at "Alligator Alcatraz," the Everglades detention facility that a federal judge ordered to be shut down last month, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday said the Trump administration has found a new prison to house arrested migrants, and boasted that detainees will likely get "a message" from the facility the government selected.
The administration has struck a "historic" deal with the Louisiana state government, said officials Wednesday, and will begin detaining hundreds of immigrants in a new facility at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly called Angola and well known for its long history of violence and brutality against inmates as well as inhumane conditions.
Noem said in a press conference Wednesday that the prison, a former slave plantation, has "absolutely" been chosen due to its reputation for brutal working conditions—over which a group of inmates sued last year—use of solitary confinement, including for teenage prisoners; lack of access to clean water, sufficient food, and adequate hygiene; and violence.
"Absolutely, this is a facility that's notorious. It's a facility—Angola prison is legendary—but that's a message that these individuals that are going to be here, that are illegal criminals, need to understand," said Noem.
"Angola has a particularly dark history of abuse and repression that's almost singular in prison history in the United States."
An isolated section of the nation's largest maximum-security prison will house "the worst of the worst" criminal offenders who are immigrants, said Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, after whom the Angola facility has apparently been named. The area where up to 400 immigrants will be held is being called Camp 57, an homage to Landry, who is the state's 57th governor.
Landry issued an emergency declaration in July to expedite repairs in the facility, which hasn't held prisoners since 2018 due to security and safety risks stemming from its deteriorating condition.
"Angola has a particularly dark history of abuse and repression that's almost singular in prison history in the United States," Eunice Cho, senior counsel at the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, told The New York Times.
As with Alligator Alcatraz, the administration has come up with a nickname for the detention and deportation center: "Louisiana Lockup."
Landry emphasized Wednesday that "the most violent offenders" will be held in the facility, and said that "if you don't think that they belong in somewhere like this, you've got a problem."
The center, which is being run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractors, was already housing 51 detainees as of Wednesday and is expected to hold up to 200 by the end of September.
Noem named examples of people convicted of crimes including murder, sexual assault, battery, and possession of child sexual abuse imagery, who would be sent to the Angola facility.
The administration's comments echoed earlier statements about Alligator Alcatraz, where officials said "the worst of the worst" would be held while they awaited deportation.
The Miami Herald and The Tampa Bay Times reported in July that just a third of about 900 people held at the facility had been convicted of crimes, which ranged from serious offenses to traffic violations. More than 250 people had never been convicted or charged with any crime.
One analysis in June found that nearly two-thirds of migrants who had been rounded up by ICE in the first months of Trump's second term did not have criminal convictions.
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'Death Warrant': New Fears Emerge as GOP Medicaid Cuts Come Closer to Reality
"If we make one wrong decision as the parents of a critically ill child, that could be the end of it," said one Louisiana mother about the added paperwork burdens being imposed by the GOP's budget law.
Sep 02, 2025
Several reports published on Tuesday highlighted the negative impacts that are expected from Medicaid cuts included in the Republicans' budget law.
The Medicaid cuts, which passed this past summer as part of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are estimated to total $1 trillion over the next decade and are projected to kick more than 10 million Americans off their health insurance. However, the cuts are also expected to have several other knock-on effects that could negatively impact the entire American healthcare system.
Rhian Lubin, a reporter for The Independent, recently traveled to Louisiana, where she met a 28-year-old mother named Hannah McDaniel who relies on Medicaid to pay for treatment for her two-year-old son, Myles, who suffers from an incurable heart defect.
As McDaniel explained to Lubin, she is already inundated with paperwork required to keep Medicaid paying for Myles' lifesaving care, and she fears that the new work requirements added by Republicans will only add to the burden and increase the risk that her son's care will be cut off.
"If we make one wrong decision as the parents of a critically ill child, that could be the end of it," said McDaniel, who added that when the GOP passed its budget package it felt like "the government had signed Myles' death warrant."
Lubin wrote that these cuts will make it especially hard for patients who live in rural communities, where local hospitals have for years been under financial strain and are in greater danger of closing thanks to the GOP's budget.
"Any cuts to that program are going to trickle down and impact children, whether that's pediatric practices who depend on Medicaid to be able to stay open or children’s hospitals," West Virginia pediatrician Lisa Costello told Lubin.
The impact of these cuts is projected to be felt nationwide, as The Idaho Statesman reported that nursing homes and hospice care facilities in the Gem State are also bracing for a catastrophic loss of funding.
The report highlighted Table Rock Senior Living at Park Place, an assisted living facility in the city of Nampa, which will see a cut in its reimbursement rates paid out by Idaho's Department of Health and Welfare in response to the GOP's Medicaid cuts. Gary Connell, who runs Table Rock Senior Living, told The Idaho Statesman that such cuts are "going to cause a lot of havoc" at both his facility and senior residences across the state.
Expected cuts to Medicaid reimbursement rates in the state are likely to force more facilities to decline Medicaid recipients as patients, which would in turn place higher burdens on emergency rooms.
"We're going to see serious access issues now, and then, what’s going to happen? They're going to go to the hospital emergency room," Democratic Idaho state Sen. Melissa Wintrow told The Idaho Statesman. "We can't refuse people at the hospital emergency room, and that's a higher cost of care, which means the legislature is going to take it on the chin in the end."
Over in North Carolina, local public radio station WHQR reported that dentists in the state are similarly fearful of lower reimbursement rates that would force them to cut off Medicaid recipients from care.
Before the GOP passed its budget law, North Carolina lawmakers were actually considering a bill that would have boosted the reimbursement rate from 35% to 46%. But with less money projected to come in from the federal government over the next decade, they abandoned the effort.
Dr. Robert Stowe, a dentist based in Winston-Salem, said that the North Carolina state legislature's current plan to slash reimbursement rates by an additional 3% this year would likely be a tipping point for many healthcare providers.
"You got a system that the reimbursement is so low now that you have providers who are seeing Medicaid dental patients that they're taking a loss on already," he explained to WHQR. "Then you're going to cut that fee by 3%—it's just untenable."
Finally, Ohio Capital Journal reported that the Medicaid cuts could come at great expense for many low-income Ohio military veterans who rely on the program.
According to the report, roughly 10% of US veterans use Medicaid for services for which they aren't eligible to receive through the US Department of Veterans Affairs, including some mental health treatment.
Dr. Forrest Faison, the former surgeon general of the United States Navy, told Ohio Capital Journal that many veterans who depend on Medicaid "because of job issues, disability, PTSD" may fall through the cracks due to the Medicaid cuts. He also emphasized that the cuts could fall particularly hard on Medicaid recipients in rural Ohio.
"A lot of these veterans, especially in Ohio, live in rural areas," he said, "where even if you've got some benefits, you may not have the services available."
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