Khalil said in a declaration filed in Manhattan federal court that while he was held overnight at a detention center in New Jersey, “I did not hear anyone mention bedbugs.”

A Manhattan federal judge denied the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss Khalil's challenge to his arrest but allowed the case to move to New Jersey.

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered a lawsuit challenging the deportation of former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil to be moved from a district court in New York to New Jersey, where the antiwar activist was first detained after he was arrested by immigration officers earlier this month.

Khalil said he was targeted for his pro-Palestinian activism and as part of the Trump administration’s “broader strategy to suppress dissent.”