US judge orders release of pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil
Mr Mahmoud Khalil - a US permanent resident - was arrested by US immigration agents on March 8. PHOTO: REUTERS
NEW YORK - A US judge ordered on June 20 that Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil be released from immigration custody, a major victory for rights groups that challenged what they called the Trump administration's unlawful targeting of a pro-Palestinian activist.
Mr Khalil, a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel's war on Gaza, was arrested by immigration agents in the lobby of his university residence in Manhattan on March 8.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, has called the protests anti-Semitic and vowed to deport foreign students who took part, and Mr Khalil became the first target of this policy.
After hearing oral arguments from lawyers for Mr Khalil and for the Department of Homeland Security, US District Judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, ordered DHS to release him from custody at a jail for immigrants in rural Louisiana.
Judge Farbiarz said the government had made no attempt to rebut evidence provided by Mr Khalil's lawyers that he was not a flight risk nor a danger to public.
'There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner (Mr Khalil),'
Judge Farbiarz said as he ruled from the bench, and punishing someone over a civil immigration matter is unconstitutional, he said.
Mr Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States, says he is being punished for his political speech in violation of the US Constitution's First Amendment. Mr Khalil condemned anti-Semitism and racism in interviews with CNN and other news outlets in 2024.
Earlier this month, Judge Farbiarz had ruled that the government was violating Mr Khalil's free speech rights by detaining him under a little-used law granting the US secretary of state power to seek deportation of non-citizens whose presence in the country was deemed adverse to US foreign policy interests.
But the judge declined on June 13 to order Mr Khalil's release from a detention centre in Jena, Louisiana, after President Donald Trump's administration said Mr Khalil was being held on a separate charge that he withheld information from his application for lawful permanent residency.
Mr Khalil's lawyers deny that allegation and say people are rarely detained on such charges.
On June 16, they urged Judge Farbiarz to grant a separate request from their client to be released on bail or be transferred to immigration detention in New Jersey to be closer to his family in New York.
Dr Noor Abdalla, Mr Khalil's wife and a US citizen, at home with their baby son.
PHOTO: REUTERS
At the June 20 hearing, Judge Farbiarz said it was 'highly unusual' for the government to jail an immigrant accused of omissions in his application for US permanent residency.
Mr Khalil, 30, became a US permanent resident in 2024, and his wife and newborn son are US citizens.
Trump administration lawyers wrote in a June 17 filing that Mr Khalil's request for release should be addressed to the judge overseeing his immigration case, an administrative process over whether he can be deported, rather than to Judge Farbiarz, who is considering whether Mr Khalil's March 8 arrest and subsequent detention were constitutional. REUTERS
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