A federal judge in New Jersey on Friday ordered the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and former Columbia University graduate student arrested in March and marked for deportation amid the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestine activists.
Politico reported that U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, announced his decision in response to a request from Khalil's legal team to release him on bail or transfer him from Louisiana, where he is being jailed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to New Jersey so he can be closer to his wife and newborn son, whose birth he missed while in detention.
The Trump administration ignored a federal judge's March order for Khalil's case to be moved to New Jersey. In April, an immigration judge ruled that Khalil can be deported.
Farbiarz said Friday that he determined that Khalil poses no flight risk and called the Trump administration's effort to continue jailing him "highly, highly unusual."
"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," Noor Abdalla, Khalil's wife, said in response to Friday's decision.
"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," Abdalla added. "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."
ACLU senior staff attorney Noor Zafar said that "this is a joyous day for Mahmoud, for his family, and for everyone's First Amendment rights."
"Since he was arrested in early March, the government has acted at every turn to punish Mahmoud for expressing his political beliefs about Palestine," Zafar added. "But today's ruling underscores a vital First Amendment principle: The government cannot abuse immigration law to punish speech it disfavors."
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, last year finished his graduate studies at Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against Israel's annihilation of Gaza. He was arrested at his New York home by plainclothes DHS officers on March 8 before being transferred to New Jersey and then Louisiana.
Accused of no crime and widely considered a political prisoner, Khalil was targeted following U.S. President Donald Trump's issuance of an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who take part in pro-Palestine demonstrations.
Earlier this month, Farbiarz ruled that the Trump administration cannot detain or deport Khalil based on the dubious claim that he poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that he reserves the right to order Khalil's expulsion under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Rubio has invoked the law to target numerous other students who the government admits committed no crimes. These include Mohsen Mahdawi, and Yunseo Chung—all permanent U.S. residents—as well as Ranjani Srinivasan and others.
The order to free Khalil follows last month's release from ICE custody of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University in Massachusetts and Fulbright scholar who was arrested and jailed in Louisiana for publishing an opinion piece in a student newspaper advocating divestment from apartheid Israel.
Far-right, pro-Israel groups like Betar and Canary Mission have compiled lists containing the names of these and other pro-Palestine students that are shared with the Trump administration for possible deportation.
Foreign nationals—and some U.S. citizens wrongfully swept up in the Trump administration's mass deportation effort—are imprisoned in facilities including private, for-profit detention centers, where there are widespread reports of poor conditions and alleged abuses.
"No one should fear being jailed for speaking out in this country,
"New York University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic co-director Alina Das, who argued Khalil's case in court, said following Friday's ruling. "We are overjoyed that Mr. Khalil will finally be reunited with his family while we continue to fight his case in court."
