Federal judge orders the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestinian Arab protests at Columbia University, who has been in custody since March facing potential deportation.
A federal judge has ordered the release on bail of Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent leader of pro-Palestinian Arab demonstrations at Columbia University, AFP reported on Friday.
Khalil has been in custody since March, facing potential deportation.
District Judge Michael Fabiarz issued the order during a hearing on Friday. Khalil’s arrest on March 8 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents transformed him into a symbol of the Trump administration’s efforts to curb antisemitic protests on US campuses, which have been on the increase since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel.
At the time of his arrest, Khalil was a graduate student at Columbia University and a highly visible figure in the nationwide campus protests against the war in Gaza. Following his detention, US authorities transferred Khalil from his New York home to a detention center in Louisiana, where he awaited deportation proceedings.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had invoked a law, approved during the 1950s Red Scare, which permits the United States to remove foreign nationals deemed adverse to US foreign policy. However, Judge Fabiarz ruled last week that the government could not detain or deport Khalil based on Rubio’s assertions that his presence on US soil constituted a national security threat.
The government specifically accuses Khalil of failing to disclose on his residency application what it described as his “membership” in the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA.
Khalil has rejected the allegations and framed his detention as retaliation for his political views.
