Beside sheer brutality, there is a clear strategic reason that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents quickly whisked Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil out of New York City last weekend. It’s the reason he was first transported to New Jersey, then to a private detention center in Louisiana. And it’s why the Trump administration is fighting to keep him there, more than a thousand miles away from his pregnant wife and lawyers.
That reason: Ravi Ragbir, whose court victories against the first Trump administration regarding his own retaliatory detention made New York a far less friendly forum for the government.
“Their intent is to intimidate, to create fear among people who don’t agree with them,” Ragbir told The Intercept in an interview.
Like Khalil, Ragbir is an activist in New York City who was targeted for deportation over his speech during the first Trump administration. Like Khalil, Ragbir was quickly flown to a far-off detention center — in his case, in Miami — as his family, friends, and attorney frantically tried to locate him. And like Khalil, whose attorney worked through the night to file a rapid petition for his release, Ragbir quickly challenged his detention and deportation.
In 2019, Ragbir won a ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — the federal appellate court that covers New York — that affirmed noncitizens’ right to challenge targeted deportations as unconstitutional retaliation under the First Amendment.
The 2nd Circuit’s decision in Ragbir’s favor is a powerful shield, not just for Khalil but also others the Trump administration has vowed to detain and deport based on Palestinian solidarity protests and activism. But that decision is only binding law within the 2nd Circuit’s jurisdiction — and not in states which fall under different federal appellate courts, such as Louisiana.
Avoiding the Ragbir precedent is precisely why ICE moved Khalil so quickly, his attorneys argued in a motion demanding that ICE bring him back to New York. Indeed, two Department of Homeland Security officials recently told The Atlantic that Khalil was moved to Louisiana “to seek the most favorable venue” for the government’s arguments.
“The Court need not accept such brazen interference with its role in assessing the legality of government action,” Khalil’s attorneys wrote to the federal judge in New York currently overseeing his case. In filings, the government countered that Khalil’s challenge belongs in Louisiana, in what will be the first of many legal battles.
“ICE will want to drag this on as long as possible,” Ragbir said.
Ragbir’s ordeal shows the lengths that Khalil and his legal team will need to go to secure his freedom and his right to stay in the United States. It also underscores just how dramatic an escalation Khalil’s case represents, even judged against the first Trump administration’s weaponization of the immigration system against dissent.
In January 2018, Ragbir was the director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, an immigrants’ rights group. He was a regular fixture at demonstrations and prayer vigils outside ICE’s office in Manhattan, and over the past year he had generated considerable negative press for the Trump administration’s tactics.
“It was so clear when Ravi was detained back in 2018 that he was being targeted because of his public speaking, his public presence,” his wife, Amy Gottlieb, an immigration attorney at the American Friends Service Committee, told The Intercept. “He was really calling out ICE for its behavior.”
Originally from Trinidad, Ragbir has lived in the U.S. since 1991 and got his green card in 1994. But after being convicted of wire fraud — charges he fought unsuccessfully, including on appeal — and serving a federal prison sentence, he was detained by ICE in 2006 and ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2007.
In early 2008, ICE released Ragbir while he appealed the deportation order. For the next nine years, ICE routinely extended his actual deportation date, and he was allowed to work as a full-time organizer with the New Sanctuary Coalition, on condition that he appear at regular check-ins.
Then Donald Trump came to power, and what were once routine check-ins became, for many immigrants, the prospect of an arrest. In March 2017, Ragbir showed up to his check-in with a crowd of supporters, including city and state officials. The spectacle generated some “resentment” within ICE, a top official told Ragbir’s attorney, according to court filings, as did his protest vigils.
When Ragbir went in for his next check-in with his wife and legal team in January 2018, they “hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst,” Gottlieb said. The week before, ICE had arrested one of Ragbir’s colleagues at his home in Queens, then quickly deported him to Haiti before he could file a challenge.
“When we got there, they told us this is the end of the road,” Ragbir said. When Ragbir fainted at the stress, ICE took him to the hospital before driving him to Newark and putting him on a plane to Miami.
Gottlieb had no idea where her husband was being held until the next morning, she said.
“They did not tell me or his wife where they were taking him,” said Alina Das, a law professor and co-director of New York University’s immigrant rights clinic, who represented Ragbir, “or why they would need to take him all the way down to Florida when there are so many detention centers in the area.”
“I am sure the administration is realizing they can use it as a form of retaliation.”
Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, said that “ICE’s normal MO includes transferring people far from their loved ones, often unexpectedly, making it much more difficult for them to successfully defend their deportation.”
“I am sure the administration is realizing they can use it as a form of retaliation,” she added.
This set off the first stage of Ragbir’s legal challenge to his detention: getting him back to New York. Similar to their tactics in Khalil’s case, the government initially argued that, since Ragbir was already out-of-state by the time a judge ordered he not be moved — he was put on the flight to Florida “several minutes” before the order came down, the government claimed — they had no obligation to bring him back. But after some cajoling by the judge, the government agreed to transfer him back after holding him in Florida for a week.
“He’s going to be suffering in Louisiana, his family is going to be suffering,” Ragbir said of Khalil. “Those are the games ICE will play to keep him in detention as long possible, hoping he’ll give up — and also to send a signal to other noncitizens, to quiet them.”
Next, the court considered Ragbir’s petition to be released from custody as he filed more challenges to his deportation. For years, ICE had not considered him a flight or safety risk requiring detention, but still the government fought to keep him in the Orange County jail, near Goshen, New York, a two-hour drive each way for Gottlieb to visit him.
In late January 2018, the judge granted his petition, ruling that the Trump administration had violated Ragbir’s right to an “orderly departure” — the opportunity to settle affairs and say goodbyes before leaving the country.
“A man we have allowed to live among us for years, to build a family and participate in the life of the community, was detained, handcuffed, forcibly placed on an airplane, and today finds himself in a prison cell,” wrote Judge Katherine B. Forrest. “We as a country need and must not act so. The Constitution demands better.”
Ragbir was released the same afternoon, and two weeks later he filed the lawsuit that would ultimately win the ruling that the government would prefer to avoid in Khalil’s case.
In April 2019, the 2nd Circuit ruled Ragbir’s advocacy “implicates the apex of protection under the First Amendment,” and that he offered “strong” evidence that ICE officials decided to deport him when they did “based on their disfavor of Ragbir’s speech (and its prominence).” Such retaliation was grounds to challenge his deportation, the majority determined.
The government appealed the groundbreaking decision to the Supreme Court, which in October 2020 sent the case back to the district court for additional consideration in light of a recent decision about deportation challenges, but without overruling the 2nd Circuit’s opinion.
In 2022, under the Biden administration, Ragbir settled his case, and the government agreed not to deport him for three years. And on his last day in office in January, President Joe Biden pardoned Ragbir’s fraud conviction, thus eliminating the grounds for his deportation. Where the Trump administration fought for years to deport Ragbir over his criticism and protest, Biden pardoned him in recognition of his role as a leader and advocate for immigrants’ rights.
“I am numb,” Ragbir said on “Democracy Now!” later that week, “after all those years of living under this, I am numb because I have always had to steel myself against what was going to happen.”
So far, Khalil’s and Ragbir’s cases have followed similar trajectories: high-profile activism contrary to Trump’s tastes, an abrupt arrest, followed by a punitive rendition to detention far from home.
“Khalil was taken from a jurisdiction that has recognized that immigrants have a right to pursue First Amendment retaliation claims,” Das said, “which is another reason why moving him outside this area is extremely disturbing.”
There are key distinctions, however, which only heighten fears about what lies ahead for Khalil and other activists who become targets.
To start, far from having a deportation order based on any underlying crime, Khalil has a valid green card, which the Trump administration argues it can revoke through an arcane, little-used provision of federal law. And unlike with Ragbir, the government has already indicated it will fight to keep Khalil away from New York, in briefs filed late Wednesday.
“What’s new here is the blatant retaliation.”
Most significant, however, is just how much more explicit the Trump administration has been in targeting Khalil for his activism.
“What’s new here is the blatant retaliation,” said National Immigration Law Center’s Altman.
“This really comes down to instilling panic, fear, and chaos,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition.
On Wednesday, the Manhattan federal judge overseeing Khalil’s case set an expedited schedule to brief the questions of where he should be held and which court should decide his fate. Khalil also has an initial immigration hearing scheduled for March 21 in Louisiana.
Khalil’s case has simultaneously sparked protests while sending a chilling message to pro-Palestinian activists, with Trump promising that he is the “first of many” to be detained and deported.
Ragbir, who knows the chill of being targeted better than most, has joined the protests in New York City supporting Khalil’s release. He’s been heartened to see broad support for Khalil, particularly the petition signed by more than 3 million people so far.
“We cannot just hide and hope,” he said. “We are going to hope. But we work in that hope.”