US judge blocks Palestinian student Khalil's deportation

A US judge on Monday ordered that Palestinian Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil not be deported for now as part of US President Donald Trump's crackdown on some anti-Israel protesters, and set a court hearing in the case for Wednesday.

Demonstrators on the streets of New York City, the state attorney general and the American Civil Liberties Union have denounced his arrest by US Department of Homeland Security agents as an attack on free speech.

Police and hundreds of protesters briefly clashed in lower Manhattan and at least one person was detained, according to a Reuters witness. Khalil, who had held legal permanent resident status and was arrested on Saturday, has been a prominent figure in Columbia's pro-Palestinian student protest movement that set off campus demonstrations across the United States and around the world last year.

Trump branded Khalil a "Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student" on social media. On Monday, US District Court Judge Jesse Furman put a hold on his deportation "unless and until the Court orders otherwise." Khalil's lawyers also urged Furman to order Khalil's return to New York. They accused the government of seeking to deprive Khalil of access to legal counsel by sending him far from New York.

The Education Department on Monday sent letters to 60 US universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Yale and four University of California schools, warning them of cuts in federal funding unless they addressed allegations of anti-Semitism on campus. Even before Khalil's arrest, students say federal immigration agents have been spotted at student housing around Columbia's Manhattan campus since Thursday, a day before the Trump administration announced it was cancelling $400 million in federal grants and contracts awarded to the school because of what it described as anti-Semitic harassment on and near Columbia's New York City campus.