Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released from federal immigration detention on Friday following a judge’s ruling.
Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and lead negotiator for the encampment at Columbia University while he was a student, was detained more than three months ago as the first case in a wave of crackdowns against foreign students involved in campus protests.
“My priority now is to get back to my wife and son,” Khalil told reporters after his release. “Although justice prevailed, it is very long overdue.”
As a condition of his release, Khalil must surrender his passport and cannot travel internationally. His movement within the United States will be restricted to New York and Michigan to visit family, Washington to lobby Congress, and New Jersey and Louisiana for court appearances. He was not immediately required to post bail.
A judge ordered earlier Friday that Khalil should be released, calling it “highly, highly unusual” that the government still sought to detain him.
“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, Michael Farbiarz, wrote in his ruling.
The Trump administration had argued that Khalil could be deported under a rarely-used law that allows them to do so if they determined his presence in the country would have significant negative consequences for American foreign policy. Khalil has not been charged with a crime.
Farbiarz had previously held that the government could not continue to hold Khalil under the determination by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. However, the judge allowed his detention to continue under a claim by the administration that Khalil had omitted some prior work experience from his green card application.
The Trump administration shortly after filed an appeal for Khalil’s release.
Khalil’s release follows the releases of several students apparently detained for pro-Palestine speech, including fellow Columbia alum Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested at his citizenship interview, and Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk, who co-wrote an opinion in her campus newspaper calling for divestment from Israel.
Khalil’s arrest on March 8 was the first shot from the Trump administration in a dramatic salvo against international student visas.
The administration has since declared it will ask student visa applicants to make their social media accounts available for inspection. Also on Friday, a judge indefinitely blocked the government’s move to bar Harvard University from being able to enroll international students.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Updated at 9:47 p.m. EDT
