NEW YORK — A US immigration judge on Wednesday ordered the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-Israel protest leader at Columbia University in New York City.

Khalil became a high-profile figure after his arrest by the Trump administration in March, part of the government’s crackdown on anti-Israel activism and antisemitism on college campuses.

Khalil was held in custody for several months until he secured a court-ordered release in June. He has waged a legal battle against deportation since then as authorities continued to seek his removal from the US.

The immigration judge in one of his cases, Jamee Comans, in Louisiana, ordered Khalil be deported to Algeria or Syria in a Wednesday court filing. Khalil is an Algerian citizen who was born in Syria to a Palestinian family.

Comans said the grounds for the deportation included that Khalil committed “fraud” during the immigration process by deliberately concealing his past involvement with the UN agency for the Palestinians, UNRWA, and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a coalition of anti-Israel campus activists.

“This court finds that respondent willfully misrepresented material fact(s) for the sole purpose of circumventing the immigration process and reducing the likelihood his application would be denied,” the judge said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also said Khalil’s presence in the US could hurt national interests, the judge noted.

Rubio has invoked a law approved during the 1950s that........

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