Ex-Columbia Student Khalil Freed From ICE Custody, Lawyers Say
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Protester Mahmoud Khalil freed from detention in US
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has been released from federal immigration detention. The former Columbia University graduate student was freed in Louisiana on Friday. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his US citizen wife and infant son. Khalil was the first person arrested under Trump’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be deported as it considers their views antisemitic. “Justice prevailed, but it’s very long overdue,” he said outside the facility in a remote part of Louisiana. “This shouldn’t have taken three months,” Khalil said.
The former Columbia University graduate student was freed in Louisiana on Friday after a court ruling.
He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his US citizen wife and infant son, born while Khalil was detained.
“Justice prevailed, but it’s very long overdue,” he said outside the facility in a remote part of Louisiana. “This shouldn’t have taken three months.”
The Trump administration is seeking to deport Khalil over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. He was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan.
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District Judge Michael Farbiarz found it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal US resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.
During an hourlong hearing conducted by phone, the New Jersey-based judge said the government had “clearly not met” the standards for detention.
The government filed notice that it’s appealing Khalil’s release.
Khalil was the first person arrested under Trump’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be deported as it considers their views antisemitic.
Protesters and civil rights groups say the administration is conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel in order to silence dissent.
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Farbiarz gave the administration leeway to continue pursuing a potential deportation based on allegations that he lied on his green card application, an accusation Khalil disputes.
The international affairs graduate student served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists and wasn’t among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics.
The judge agreed Friday with Khalil’s lawyers that the protester was being prevented from exercising his free speech and due process rights despite no obvious reason for his continued detention.
Khalil said Friday that no one should be detained for protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. He said his time in the detention facility had shown him “a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and liberty and justice.”
“Whether you are a US citizen, an immigrant or just a person on this land doesn’t mean that you are less of a human,” he said, adding that “justice will prevail, no matter what this administration may try to portray” about immigrants.
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In a statement after the judge’s ruling, Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she can finally “breathe a sigh of relief” after her husband’s three months in detention.
The judge’s decision comes after several other scholars targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another former Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri.
Ex-Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil released from ICE detention after judge’s order
Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student, was arrested on March 8. Khalil organized campus protests favoring Hamas, which runs counter to U.S. foreign policy. A federal judge ordered Khalil’s release Friday night after 104 days of detention. “Justice will prevail,” Khalil said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.”After more than three months we can finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Mahmoud is on his way home to me and Deen,” his wife said. “We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family,” she added. “The government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians,” his lawyer said. ‘We are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family, and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken,’ Khalil told the New York Times. ‘I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system,’ he said.
June 20 (UPI) — Former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil on Friday night was freed from federal detention in central Louisiana after a federal judge ordered his release.
In Newark, N.J., U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said that prosecutors didn’t provide a legitimate justification for 104 days of detention since March 8 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Syrian national organized campus protests favoring Hamas while enrolled at Columbia University in New York City, which runs counter to U.S. foreign policy.
Farbiarz, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, said it was “highly, highly unusual” the government still wanted him detained.
“Together, they suggest that there is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner – and, of course, that would be unconstitutional,” the judge said.
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He was ordered to surrender his passport and travel documents, and restricted to four states and Washington, D.C.
While in detention, Khalil missed the birth of his first child in New York in April, and he was allowed to hold him while in custody in May. His wife is a U.S. citizen.
Just before 8 p.m. CDT, Khalil walked out of the detention center in Jena, La., about 220 miles northwest of New Orleans, with his lawyers and wearing a kaffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.
He said no person “should actually be detained for protesting a genocide,” Khalil said. “Justice will prevail.”
“After more than three months we can finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Mahmoud is on his way home to me and Deen, who never should have been separated from his father,” Dr. Noor Abdalla, Mahmoud Khalil’s wife, said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. “We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others the government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians. But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family, and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken for speaking out for Palestinian freedom.”
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Alina Das, one of Khalil’s lawyers and co-director of New York University’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, said: “The purpose of every step that the government has taken in this case has been to ensure that Mr. Khalil remains locked away until he is deported, as retaliation and punishment for his speech.”
After the birth of his son Deen, he wrote: “During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept my voice low so that the 70 other men sleeping in this concrete room would not see my cloudy eyes or hear my voice catch. I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience. Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?
“Since that morning, I have come to recognize the look in the eyes of every father in this detention center. I sit here contemplating the immensity of your birth and wonder how many more firsts will be sacrificed to the whims of the US government, which denied me even the chance of furlough to attend your birth.”
He was arrested outside student housing on the campus.
On June 11, Farbiarz ordered Khalil’s release after determining that the government could no longer detain him over the claim he is a threat to the country’s foreign policy.
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Then two days later, Trump administration said Khalil could be detained because they said he kept some prior work off his application for permanent residency. The judge allowed the detention to continue.
The Justice Department wanted him detained until an immigration judge could weigh the matter, claiming tFarbiarz does not have jurisdiction.
Farbiarz said it would be a “waste of time” to send the case to an immigration judge who would likely reach his same conclusion.
Other pro-Palestinian activists have also been released as their immigration cases go through the courts.
In April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a memo, citing an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The secretary of state can deport noncitizens if the secretary determines their presence in the country would result in “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
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The arrest was carried out by the ICE, which is part of Homeland Security.
Khalil, who was born in 1995, grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and was granted permanent U.S. resident status. H
Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil freed from ICE detention
Mahmoud Khalil was the first noncitizen activist to be arrested and detained by the Trump administration this year. Khalil, a legal permanent resident, was arrested in New York in March and flown to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana. The judge’s order to release Khalil on bail marks the latest setback for the administration in its pledge to detain and deport what it has termed “pro-jihadist” students. Those freed in recent weeks include Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student grabbed by masked federal agents outside her apartment. Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student detained at his citizenship interview; and Badar Khan Suri, an Indian scholar at Georgetown University seized outside his home in Virginia. The lawyers for the detainees have said their arrests are a form of unconstitutional retaliation for their activism in opposition to the war in Gaza. The first thing he hopes to do after 104 days in detention, he said, is “just hug my wife and son”
Khalil, a legal permanent resident, was arrested in New York in March and flown to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana. In April, his wife gave birth to their first child, Deen.
U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey said Friday that prosecutors had not provided a legitimate justification for Khalil’s continued detention.
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The government’s bid to keep Khalil detained based on a relatively minor alleged immigration infraction when he is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community is “highly, highly, highly unusual,” Farbiarz said.
Khalil’s arrest was filmed by his wife, Noor Abdalla. (Video: Noor Abdalla)
The facts of the case suggest that there is “at least something to the underlying claim” that the government is using the immigration system to punish Khalil for his activism, the judge said. “And of course that would be unconstitutional.”
Just before 8 p.m., Khalil walked out of the detention center in Jena, Louisiana, flanked by his lawyers and wearing a kaffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.
No person “should actually be detained for protesting a genocide,” Khalil said. “Justice will prevail.”
The first thing he hopes to do after 104 days in detention, he said, is “just hug my wife and son.”
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The judge’s order to release Khalil on bail marks the latest setback for the Trump administration in its pledge to detain and deport what it has termed “pro-jihadist” students, with federal courts delivering a string of defeats to the government in recent weeks.
One by one, the targeted students and scholars have been released as judges have taken a dim view of the rationale offered by prosecutors for their detentions. The lawyers for the detainees have said their arrests are a form of unconstitutional retaliation for their activism in opposition to the war in Gaza.
Those freed in recent weeks include Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student grabbed by masked federal agents outside her apartment; Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student detained at his citizenship interview; and Badar Khan Suri, an Indian scholar at Georgetown University seized outside his home in Virginia.
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Federal courts have “uniformly rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to target international students” and green-card holders based on their speech, said Elora Mukherjee, a law professor at Columbia University. Taken together, Mukherjee said, the rulings send a clear message that the administration “shouldn’t be snatching up peaceful protesters and those who write op-eds.”
Khalil had been detained far longer than any other targeted student and has not been accused of any crime.
Instead, officials initially relied on an obscure provision of immigration law to arrest him and launch deportation proceedings.
The provision allows the secretary of state to determine that a noncitizen’s presence in the country would harm a “compelling” foreign policy interest. In a March memo, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Khalil’s participation in “antisemitic protests” fostered a “hostile environment for Jewish students” and undermined U.S. foreign policy.
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Last month, Farbiarz found that the provision of immigration law cited by Rubio was probably unconstitutional because of its vagueness, and last week, Farbiarz blocked the Trump administration from continuing to detain Khalil on foreign policy grounds.
However, prosecutors subsequently said they were detaining Khalil based on a different rationale, namely their allegation that he had omitted information on his application for permanent residency.
His lawyers deny that claim. Farbiarz also noted previously that the government “virtually never” detains immigrants solely on that basis.
Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, called Farbiarz a “rogue district judge” and said Friday’s ruling was “yet another example of how out of control members of the judicial branch are in undermining national security.”
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“The Trump administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detail Khalil,” McLaughlin said in a statement, adding that she expects a higher court to vindicate that position.
While Khalil was released on bail in his federal detention case, his immigration proceeding will continue. On Friday, an immigration judge in Louisiana denied Khalil’s request for bond — a decision overruled by Farbiarz’s order.
For Khalil and his family, there was relief and exultation. “We can finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Mahmoud is on his way home to me and Deen, who never should have been separated from his father,” Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s wife and a U.S. citizen, said in a statement.
Khalil was born and raised in a refugee camp in Syria and went to college in Lebanon. He and his wife moved to the United States in 2023 to begin his graduate studies at Columbia. That fall, protests over the Israel-Gaza war erupted.
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Khalil was a prominent leader in the protests who interacted with the media without disguising his identity. While President Donald Trump has called him a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student,” the government submitted no evidence in the case to back up those assertions. Instead, friends and colleagues described Khalil as someone who defused tensions and acted as an intermediary between student protesters and the university administration.
Several Jewish students at Columbia wrote letters to the court attesting to his commitment to nonviolence and dialogue, and Khalil told CNN last year that “antisemitism and any form of racism has no place on campus and in this movement.” Khalil missed his graduation from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in May because of his detention.
Khalil was freed without any form of GPS monitoring, and ICE officials will return his green card, although they will retain his passport. Under the terms of his release, he will be able to travel to New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Louisiana, as well as to Washington for lobbying and legislative purposes.
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Khalil has remained cautious through his long detention and separation from his family, but was ebullient on Friday, his lawyers said.
“It’s an enormous relief that Mahmoud’s nightmare of arrest and detention is coming to an end,” said Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of Khalil’s lawyers, adding that it should not have taken this long to free him.
Mahmoud Khalil ordered released by federal judge: What to know
“Justice prevailed, but it’s very long overdue,” Mahmoud Khalil says. The former Columbia University graduate student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his U.S. citizen wife and infant son. Khalil was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic. He was the first person arrested under President Donald Trump ‘s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’S devastating war in Gaza.“The message is: Justice will prevail, no mater what this administration may try to portray, portraying that immigrants are criminals,’’ Khalil tells a reporter. “No one should be detained for protesting Israel’s war inGaza.’ ‘But we are celebrating today to be reunited with our family,’ his wife says.
The former Columbia University graduate student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his U.S. citizen wife and infant son, born while Khalil was detained.
JENA, La. (AP) — Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released Friday from federal immigration detention, freed after three months by a judge’s ruling after becoming a symbol of President Donald Trump ‘s clampdown on campus protests.
The Trump administration is seeking to deport him over his role in pro-Palestinian protests.
Khalil was released after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.
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“Petitioner is not a flight risk and the evidence presented is that he is not a danger to the community,” he said. “Period, full stop.”
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Later in the hourlong hearing, which took place by phone, the judge said the government had “clearly not met” the standards for detention.
The government filed notice Friday evening that it’s appealing Khalil’s release.
Khalil was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
He was the first person arrested under President Donald Trump ‘s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy.
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The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic. Protesters and civil rights groups say the administration is conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel in order to silence dissent.
The international affairs graduate student isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. He served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists and wasn’t among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics.
Khalil said Friday that no one should be detained for protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. He said his time in the Jena, Louisiana, detention facility had shown him “a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and justice.”
“No human is illegal,” he said when a reporter asked what message he’d like to send the public. “The message is: Justice will prevail, no mater what this administration may try to portray, portraying that immigrants are criminals.”
Khalil had to surrender his passport and can’t travel internationally, but he will get his green card back and be given official documents permitting limited travel within the country, including New York and Michigan to visit family, New Jersey and Louisiana for court appearances and Washington to lobby Congress.
Farbiarz had ruled earlier that the government couldn’t deport Khalil on those grounds, but gave it leeway to continue pursuing a potential deportation based on allegations that he lied on his green card application. Trump administration lawyers repeated that accusation at Friday’s court hearing. It’s an accusation Khalil disputes.
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In issuing his ruling Friday, the judge agreed with Khalil’s lawyers that the protest leader was being prevented from exercising his free speech and due process rights despite no obvious reason for his continued detention. The judge noted that Khalil is now clearly a public figure.
Khalil’s lawyers had asked that he either be freed on bail or, at the very least, moved from Louisiana to New Jersey so he can be closer to his wife and newborn son, who are both U.S. citizens.
Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she can finally “breathe a sigh of relief” after her husband’s three months in detention.
“We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others,” she said in a statement provided by Khalil’s lawyers. “But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family.”
The judge’s decision comes after several other scholars targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another former Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri.
Marcelo reported from New York. Jennifer Peltz contributed from New York.
Mahmoud Khalil Ordered Released After 3 Months of Detention
A federal judge ordered the Trump Administration to release pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration detention center where he had been held for more than three months. The decision marks a significant victory for Khalil, a legal permanent resident and former Columbia University student who became the first activist to be arrested and detained by the Trump administration earlier this year. The ruling is the latest in a string of legal defeats for the Administration, which has relied on a seldom-used provision of immigration law that allows the Secretary of State to order the removal of a noncitizen deemed a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. Since his arrest, several foreign students and academics have been targeted under the foreign policy statute, including Georgetown researcher Badar Khan Suri and Tufts Ph.D. candidate Rumeysa Ozturk.
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U.S. District Judge Michael E. Farbiarz said that the government had failed to demonstrate that Khalil posed a flight risk or danger to the community, and questioned whether its shifting justifications for his detention were a cover for retaliating against his public views. The ruling is the latest in a string of legal defeats for the Trump Administration, which has relied on a seldom-used provision of immigration law that allows the Secretary of State to order the removal of a noncitizen deemed a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. In a March memo, Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Khalil of participating in “antisemitic protests” and fostering a “hostile environment for Jewish students.” Khalil’s lawyers said the government’s claims mischaracterized his views and cited his repeated public statements condemning antisemitism and supporting solidarity between Jewish and Palestinian communities. “The liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand in hand,” Khalil said in one interview referenced in court.
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Khalil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at his New York apartment on March 8. He has not been charged with any crime. The government’s initial case for his detention was based on the foreign policy provision, which Judge Farbiarz found likely unconstitutional last month due to its vagueness. After that, prosecutors argued that Khalil had committed paperwork errors on his green card application—but Farbiarz rejected that rationale as well, noting that immigrants are “virtually never” detained on that basis alone.
Demonstrators hold a rally and march to the national ICE headquarters to protest the arrest of Palestinian activists including Mahmoud Khalil in Washington, D.C. on April 5, 2025. Andrew Lichtenstein—Corbis via Getty Images
The decision clears the way for Khalil to return to his home in New York, where his wife Noor Abdalla recently gave birth to their first child—a moment he missed while in custody at a remote ICE facility in Jena, Louisiana. In a statement, Abdalla described the ruling as a “sigh of relief” but noted that it “does not begin to address the injustices the Trump Administration has brought upon our family, and so many others the government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians.”
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While the judge’s ruling orders Khalil to be freed from detention, the Trump Administration could still continue its efforts to deport him. An immigration judge in Louisiana has already ruled that he can be removed from the U.S. as a national security risk, a decision his legal team is challenging.
Read more: Inside Donald Trump’s Mass Deportation Operation
Khalil’s case has become emblematic of the Trump Administration’s approach to dissent on college campuses. Since his arrest, several foreign students and academics have been targeted under the foreign policy statute. Judges have ordered the release of others, including Georgetown researcher Badar Khan Suri, Tufts Ph.D. candidate Rumeysa Ozturk, and fellow Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, all of whom were subsequently freed.
In each case, courts have questioned whether the Administration was using immigration enforcement as a tool to punish political speech—particularly criticism of Israel.