NEW YORK — An immigration appeals board has issued a final removal order against Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, taking the Palestinian activist one step closer to possibly being deported.

Khalil’s legal team had expected the unfavorable ruling from the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative body operated by the Justice Department and staffed nearly entirely by Trump appointees.

His lawyers said it would have no immediate impact of substance on his liberty, with immigration authorities prevented from detaining or deporting him until there’s a resolution in a separate federal court case challenging the legality of the government’s actions.

But the order is another hurdle blocking Khalil’s avenues to remaining in the country, where he is a lawful permanent resident and recently welcomed his first child with his wife, an American citizen.

“I have committed no crime,” Khalil, 31, said in a statement. “I have broken no law. The only thing I am guilty of is speaking out against the genocide in Palestine — and this administration has weaponized the immigration system to punish me for it.”

“My family is here. My life is here. I reject any attempt to intimidate me out of my home based on lies and ideological attacks. This is not justice.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment.

Khalil intends to appeal the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, his lawyers said.

In doing so, he must bring his legal challenge before a federal appeals court that’s widely considered to be the most conservative in the United States. Khalil’s immigration case is subject to the 5th Circuit, as opposed to an appeals court in New York where he lives, because the Trump administration transferred him to Louisiana hours after he was detained last March in a Columbia-owned building.

Following more than 100 days in detention, and missing the birth of his son and graduation, Khalil was released last summer after a New Jersey federal judge determined the Trump administration’s primary reason for seeking to deport him would likely be deemed unconstitutional.

The initial reason for targeting Khalil provided by the government was that his activities in the U.S., protesting Israel’s bombing and occupation of Gaza and the West Bank while studying for his Master’s at Columbia, posed a national security threat.

When Khalil’s lawyers challenged the foreign policy charge on First Amendment grounds, the Trump administration added a second ground for removal — claiming he failed to include details of his work experience at the United Nations on his green card application. His attorneys have lambasted that accusation as entirely without merit.

The Board of Immigration Appeals’ Thursday decision relied on both charges, according to Khalil’s lawyers. The Daily News has sought to obtain a copy of the document that was not filed publicly.

“In all my decades as an immigration lawyer, I have never seen such a baseless and politically motivated decision. The BIA’s decision has absolutely no support in the record, violates a federal court order, and we’ll be fighting it until the end,” Khalil’s immigration lawyer Marc Van Der Hout said in a statement.

“Federal courts have already agreed that Mahmoud was targeted for his speech, and there is likely much more evidence of the government’s unlawful retaliation that has yet to come to light.”

The decision further thickens the bramble in a legal maze Khalil has found himself in since his arrest last year. While the federal court rulings from last summer continue to protect him from ICE, his chances of an ultimate victory in that matter — what’s known as a habeas corpus petition — are uncertain.

A panel of judges in the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals last year granted a victory to the Trump administration in a split 2-to-1 decision, which found the New Jersey federal court didn’t have jurisdiction to consider the habeas matter.

That decision hasn’t taken effect, though, as Khalil’s lawyers have asked all active judges to reconsider the panel’s decision.

If taken up by the full bench, one of those justices would be newly-appointed 3rd Circuit Judge Emil Bove, Trump’s former personal lawyer. Khalil has asked Bove to recuse himself from the matter based on his recent work at the Justice Department, which included probes into international student-activists.

As his cases make their way through two separate systems, Khalil, on the anniversary of his arrest, recently spoke with The News about the personal toll the last year has taken on him and his family.

He said he was at first in denial about his circumstances, only to realize that his rights weren’t ironclad in the U.S. immigration system.

“Rights will not protect you,” he told the Daily News.

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