Federal Judge Orders Release of Columbia University Student Mahmoud Khalil

NEWARK, New Jersey — A federal judge has decided that Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student at Columbia University, must be freed by the government despite the Trump administration’s efforts to deport him due to his involvement in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Khalil, who is a legal resident of the U.S., was apprehended by federal immigration agents on March 8 in the lobby of an apartment owned by his university. This marked the first arrest under President Donald Trump’s initiative targeting students who participated in campus protests against the war in Gaza.

Following his arrest, he was transported across the country to an immigration detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, located thousands of miles away from his lawyers and his wife, a U.S. citizen who gave birth to their child while he was detained.

Khalil’s lawyers challenged the legality of his detention, accusing the Trump administration of trying to crack down on free speech. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he has the power to deport Khalil because his presence in the U.S. could harm foreign policy.

U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz had ruled earlier that expelling Khalil from the U.S. on those grounds was likely unconstitutional.

In a new ruling Wednesday, the judge said that Khalil had shown that his continued detention is causing irreparable harm to his career, his family and his free speech rights.

Farbiarz gave the government until Friday to appeal the decision. He also required Khalil to post a $1 bond before he is freed.

“The court’s decision is the most significant vindication yet of Mahmoud’s rights,” said Ramzi Kassem, co-director of CLEAR, a legal nonprofit and clinic at the City University of New York that represents Khalil. “But we aren’t out of the woods until Mahmoud is free and back home with his wife and child.”

Lawyers and spokespersons for the Justice Department, which are handling the case, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The judge’s decision comes after several other legal residents targeted for their activism won custody in recent weeks, including another Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi, a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk, and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cited a rarely used statute to justify the deportation of Khalil and others, which gives him power to deport those who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

Khalil isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The government, however, has said that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country for expressing views that the administration considers to be antisemitic and “pro-Hamas,” referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Khalil, a 30-year-old international affairs graduate student, had served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists at Columbia University who took over a campus lawn last spring to protest Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

The university brought police in to dismantle the encampment after a small group of protesters seized an administration building. Khalil is not accused of participating in the building occupation and wasn’t among the people arrested in connection with the demonstrations.

But images of his maskless face at protests, along with his willingness to share his name with reporters, have made him an object of scorn among those who saw the protesters and their demands as antisemitic. The White House accused Khalil of “siding with terrorists,” but has yet to give any evidence for the claim.

The Trump administration has said it is taking at least $400 million in federal funding away from research programs at Columbia and its medical center to punish it for not doing enough to fight what it considers to be antisemitism on campus.

Some Jewish students and faculty complained about being harassed during the demonstrations or ostracized because of their faith or their support of Israel.