NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Friday ordered the U.S. government to free former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from the immigration detention center where he has been held since early March while the Trump administration sought to deport him over his role in pro-Palestinian protests.
Ruling from the bench in New Jersey, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue to detain a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.
In reaching his decision, he said Khalil is likely not a flight risk and “is not a danger to the community. Period, full stop.”
He ordered Khalil released from a detention center in rural Louisiana later Friday.
The government had “clearly not met” the standards for detention, he said later in the hourlong hearing, which took place by phone.
Khalil was the first arrest 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.
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. Khalil disputes the accusation that he wasn’t forthcoming on the application.
His lawyers say the Trump administration is simply trying to crack down on free speech. The judge noted Khalil is now clearly a public figure given his prominence during the campus protests and since his detainment.
Khalil’s lawyers had asked that he either be freed on bail or, at the very least, moved from a Louisiana jail 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 following the ruling that she can finally “breathe a sigh of relief” after her husband was detained for three months.
“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.
Khalil was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
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.
The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic.
The judge noted Khalil has no criminal record and the government has put forward no evidence to suggest he’s been involved in violence or property destruction.
During the court hearing, lawyers for the Trump administration argued that Farbiarz simply didn’t have jurisdiction to decide on the release request. They argued for continued detention based on the grounds that Khalil omitted information from his green card application.
But Khalil’s lawyer argued that “retaliatory detention is the government’s goal.”
“This has never been a normal immigration case,” Alina Das said.
Farbiarz, in issuing his ruling, agreed with Das that Khalil was being prevented from exercising his free speech and due process rights despite no obvious reason for his continued detention.
