Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist detained by ICE, are fighting to keep his case in N.J.

Khalil filed a lawsuit, also known as a habeas petition, protesting his detention in New York. A New York judge previously ordered the case to continue in New Jersey because Khalil’s attorneys filed the petition while he was detained in New Jersey.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student facing deportation for his role in pro-Palestinian campus protests, urged a federal judge on Friday to move their client’s case out of Louisiana, describing his imprisonment there as a “Kafkaesque” ploy to chill free speech.