Mahmoud Khalil arrives in NJ after being granted release... and vows to continue fight 'even if they kill me'
Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has landed in New Jersey, telling reporters that he will continue to fight for his country 'even if they kill me.'
Khalil, 30, arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Saturday to an eruption of cheers after he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for over 100 days.
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez greeted him at the airport and stood by his side as he spoke to the press.
Khalil defiantly spoke, telling reporters: 'If they threaten me with detention, even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.'
'I just want to go back and continue the work I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights, a speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished.'
Khalil, a lawful resident of the US, was granted release and freed on bail by a New Jersey federal judge on Friday.
The green card holder was taken into custody on March 8, 2025, as the Trump administration cracked down on pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses.
Khalil was one of the primary organizers of protests that took over Columbia as the Israel - Hamas conflict was ignited.
In the ruling Friday, Judge Michael E. Farbiaz said that none of the Trump administration's allegations against Khalil justified his continued detention, and sided with Khalil's argument that he was locked up as an unlawful retaliation for his activism.
In his ruling on Friday, Farbiarz said: 'There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil - And of course that would be unconstitutional.'
Khalil has not been charged with a crime, but the judge's order to free him comes as the Trump White House continues efforts to deport him back to Algeria, where he is a citizen.
When he was detained earlier this year, Khalil's case gained national attention as he was the first pro-Palestinian protester to be arrested by the Trump administration in its crackdown on college campuses.
Several protests he organized and led at Columbia turned violent, with one seeing 112 students arrested when they stormed a campus building and occupied it as NYPD officers tried to shut their demonstration down.
His arrest sparked protests across the country as critics accused the Trump administration of unlawfully arresting a legal resident without charging him with a crime in violation of his free speech.
He was detained under the Cold War–era Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which states that non-US citizens can be deported if they are antagonistic against US foreign policy.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Khalil of spreading anti-Semitism, and White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said he was 'siding with terrorists.'
But in the three months that Khalil has been detained, the Justice Department hasn't disclosed any substantive connection between Khalil and Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and killed around 1,200 civilians.
In their successful filing to free Khalil this week, the graduate student's attorneys argued that he was not spreading anti-Semitism when he campaigned for Palestine in its war with Israel.
They cited past quotes from him such as comments he made to CNN during a campus protest, where he said that 'the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand by hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.'
Judge Farbiarz had previously ruled that the foreign policy law was not enough to justify Khalil's detention, and his ruling on Friday shot down further allegations from the Trump administration that Khalil made paperwork errors when applying for citizenship last year.
A number of other pro-Palestine protestors have been arrested and freed in the time that Khalil was detained.
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