Johnny Sinodis, a member of the detained Columbia University student’s legal team, said the immigration judge who ruled that Mahmoud Khalil could be deported didn’t show “an ounce of desire” to give him a fair hearing, Al Jazeera reports.

“[The ruling] was historic in its unfairness. The judge went out of her way to make very clear to us and anyone in the courtroom that the constitutional arguments we were making had no place in immigration court,” Sinodis said in an online news conference.

Another of Khalil’s lawyers, Marc Van der Hout, described the ruling by Judge Jamee Comans of the LaSalle Immigration Court in Louisiana as the “epitome of the lack of due process in a court proceeding in this country”.

“It was shocking. The immigration judge had made up her mind before the hearing even started. What she was going to do, she basically cut off questioning throughout the proceeding,” he said.

Khalil — a US permanent resident arrested and facing deportation over his pro-Palestine activism — can still appeal the decision.