US student Mahmoud Khalil detained for pro-Palestinian protests released from immigration detention
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released Friday from federal immigration detention after 104 days by a judge's ruling after becoming a symbol of President Donald Trump 's clampdown on campus protests.
The former Columbia University graduate student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday where he travelled to New York to meet his wife and son who was born while Mr Khalil was detained.
Speaking to reporters at Newark International Airport, New Jersey he said: 'The US government is funding this genocide, and Columbia University is investing in this genocide."
'This is why I will continue to protest with everyone of you. Not only if they threaten me with detention. Even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.'
'Whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone in this land, you're not illegal. That doesn't make you less of a human,' he said.
Mr Khalil wasn't accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia.
However, the government has said noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the US for expressing views the administration considers to be antisemitic and 'pro-Hamas,' referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Mr Khalil, was released after US District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be 'highly, highly unusual' for the government to continue detaining a legal US resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn't been accused of any violence. The government filed notice Friday evening that it is appealing Mr Khalil's release.
Federal immigration agents detained Mr Khalil on March 8, the first arrest under Trump's crackdown on students participating in the protests on university campuses.
Mr Khalil was then taken to an immigration detention center in Jena, a remote part of Louisiana thousands of miles from his attorneys and his wife.
The 30-year-old international affairs student had served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists at Columbia University who took over a campus lawn to protest the war.
Khalil's lawyers challenged the legality of his detention, arguing that the Trump administration was trying to deport him for an activity protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified Khalil's deportation by citing a rarely used statute that gives him power to deport those who pose 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.'
Joining Mr Khalil at the airport, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said his detention violated the First Amendment and was 'an affront to every American.'
'He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,' she said.
'The Trump administration knows that they are waging a losing legal battle," Ocasio-Cortez added. "They are violating the law, and they know that they are violating the law.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ITV News
18 minutes ago
- ITV News
US directly joins Israel-Iran conflict with strikes on Iran nuclear sites
The United States has directly joined Israel's conflict with Iran - with Donald Trump confirming his military had hit Iranian nuclear sites. In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president said: 'We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,". "All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home.' Trump added in a later post that he would address the nation at 10pm Eastern Time (3am BST), writing 'This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!' It comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran - with the aim of targeting the country's nuclear enrichment facilities. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified the strikes by saying he believed Iran could be weeks or months away from developing a nuclear weapon which could threaten Israel.
Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
America hits Iran's nuclear sites
Just before 1 a.m GMT on Sunday morning, Donald Trump announced that the United States had bombed three nuclear sites in Iran: Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan sites. It followed a tense 72 hours in which senior White House advisers became increasingly convinced that diplomatic channels had been exhausted, with military action the only available recourse to eliminate Iran's nuclear programme. Following the attack, Trump declared: We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. It comes after Trump announced on Thursday that he would decide on whether to strike within two weeks, citing a 'substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future.' His Truth Social post emphasises both American military prowess and the need for peace – a nod to the two horses that he has been trying to ride. Trump's 'MAGA' base is heavily split on Iranian intervention. An Economist/YouGov poll conducted last weekend found that 53 per cent of voters who backed Trump in the 2024 presidential election do not want the country to join in Israel's strikes. Influential conservatives like commentator Tucker Carlson and ex-aide Steve Bannon have both urged restraint too. The attack comes on the ninth night of the Israel-Iran war. Reports by Reuters and Axios suggest that the U.S used B2 bombers to launch the aerial assault and that senior Israeli officials were given prior notice too. More details will emerge in the coming days: Tehran previously pledged retaliation and warned that American engagement would prove 'very, very dangerous for everyone.'
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Queensland's Donald Trump - how a ruthless Aussie pollie wrote the playbook for the US President
As US President, Donald Trump uses federal agents, police and threatens National Guard intervention against opponents - but it's a blueprint first drawn up in Australia. Queenslanders who lived through Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's 21-year reign over the state will recognise the right-wing premier's fingerprints all over that playbook. Bjelke-Petersen began life as a farmworker on his father's rural property near Kingaroy, 220km north-west of Brisbane - but went on to dominate state politics for a generation. New Stan docudrama 'Joh: The Last King of Queensland ' drops on Sunday - featuring Rake star Richard Roxburgh as the notorious politician- and has drawn astonishing parallels between the Trump and the controversial premier. 'You look at Joh and you think [he was a] once-in-a-generation character,' Queensland author and journalist Matthew Condon told the filmmakers. 'And then you look at Trump - and some bells start to ring in terms of what we've gone through a generation or two before. 'The template was already here with a peanut farmer at the bottom of the world.' The comparisons to Trump are frequent throughout Bjelke-Petersen's time in power from 1968 to 1987, when he was known as the 'law and order' premier - a catchcry often now repeated by Trump. In 1970s, at the height of South African apartheid and battles over Indigenous land rights, Bjelke-Petersen welcomed an all-white Springboks rugby squad to Queensland, sparking protests across Brisbane. Police were deployed to disperse protesters gathered outside the team's Tower Mill Hotel, where excessive force was used. Actor Roxburgh, playing the National Party leader in speech recreations for the film, relives the politician's famous insistence: 'I declared a state of emergency.' It was reported that he brought in country cops housed in military camps, and gave the force 'the green light to do what they needed to do without repercussion'. 'He gave police carte blanche to do whatever they wanted,' said one commentator. Lindy Morrison OAM, member of indie rock band The Go-Betweens, accused police of 'bashing people in the head'. 'We were trapped. It was massively brutal,' she said. Lawyer Terry O'Gorman, who was also there at the time, said police 'in effect took it into their own hands'. 'They chased protesters in the dark,' he added. Bjelke-Petersen also railed against union strikes and the city's punk music scene, prompting graffiti in Brisbane reading 'Pig City'. Bjelke-Petersen proudly embraced his ties to the police and described it publicly as a 'jolly good relationship'. Others claimed he ran it as his private militia. And like Trump, he had a penchant for describing anyone who opposed him - notably ousted former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam - as socialists and communists. He was described as 'not liking protests, hippies, unions, the unemployed, and gays - and used his police force against them'. But Bjelke-Petersen was of the attitude that it was 'law and order - if you don't like it, you know what you can do.' He was described in Stan's docudrama as everything from 'innovative' and 'mundane and boring' to a 'power-hungry, hillbilly dictator' who 'wrote the playbook for Trump'. Bjelke-Petersen was finally ousted from power in 1987 after an unsuccessful tilt to be prime minister, which John Howard described as 'showing appalling judgement'. He died aged 94 in 2005, and in the Stan docu-drama, Queensland MP Bob Katter recalled his final meeting with the onetime political powerhouse. 'I carried him to bed the last time I saw him,' he said.
