NEW YORK >> A federal judge has ruled that the legal battle over Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation should continue to play out in New Jersey, rejecting the Trump administration’s bid to transfer the Columbia University protester’s case to Louisiana.

In a written decision Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz in Newark said jurisdiction over the case should remain in New Jersey since Khalil was being held there at the time his lawyers filed their habeas corpus petition demanding his release.

“The Court’s jurisdiction is not defeated by the Petitioner having been moved to Louisiana,” the judge wrote, describing the government’s argument otherwise as “unpersuasive.”

The ruling does not guarantee that Khalil will be moved out of a detention facility in Louisiana, where he is being held as the government seeks his deportation for his role in campus protests against Israel. But it will allow his attorneys to make their arguments for his release before a judge in New Jersey.

Khalil’s wife Noor Abdalla, an American citizen who is eight months pregnant, called the decision an “important step towards securing Mahmoud’s freedom,” adding that “there is still a lot more to be done.”

Khalil, a legal U.S. resident, was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8 in the lobby of his university-owned apartment. It was the first arrest under President Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza.

On the day after his arrest, Khalil was flown to an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana, a move his lawyers allege was intended to manipulate federal jurisdiction of the case while depriving Khalil of access to his wife and children.

“They keep passing around the body in an almost Kafkaesque way,” defense attorney Baher Azmy said at a court hearing Friday in New Jersey.