Khalil released

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Pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was released from detention Friday evening, ending more than three months of custody in a test of the executive branch's power to unilaterally act against legal U.S. residents.

Khalil, whose plight has been center stage of President Donald Trump's vow to crack down on opponents of Israel's incursion into Gaza, had been in immigration agents’ custody since March.

He was released from a detention center in Louisiana just after 6:30 p.m. Friday, hours after a federal judge ordered that he be freed.

"Although justice prevailed," he said upon his release, "it’s long, very long overdue. And this shouldn’t have taken three months."

He said he was traveling back to New York and couldn't wait to reunite with his wife and infant son, who was born while Khalil was in custody.

"Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this," Khalil said. "That doesn’t mean that there is a right person for this. There’s no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide, for protesting their University, Columbia University."

“After more than three months, we can finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Mahmoud is on his way home to me and Deen, who never should have been separated from his father,” Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others the government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians," she said. "But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family, and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken for speaking out for Palestinian freedom.”

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin lashed out at "rogue" U.S. District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz, saying he had no authority to order Khalil’s release.

"This is yet another example of how out of control members of the judicial branch are undermining national security," McLaughlin said. "Their conduct not only denies the result of the 2024 election, it also does great harm to our constitutional system by undermining public confidence in the courts."

Government attorney Dhruman Sampat had argued that Congress has given the executive branch sweeping powers to determine who could be removed from the county.

The courts should not have the authority to interfere, Sampat said.

I’m going to exercise the discretion that I have to order the release of the petitioner in this case," said Farbiarz, who is based in New Jersey.

Farbiarz declined a government request to stay his order for seven days to give the government more time to fight it.

Magistrate Judge Michael Hammer said Khalil will have to "surrender his passport and any other travel documents" as a condition of his release.

Hammer also ordered Khalil to limit his travel to New York, where he lives; Michigan, where he has family; New Jersey, where Farbiarz is based; Louisiana, the location of his immigration case; and Washington, D.C., for congressional visits and lobbying efforts.

Farbiarz, though, made it clear that Khalil needs to be released from custody on Friday, and federal authorities said they believe he can walk free by 6:30 p.m. CT.

Khalil, who has a green card, is married to a U.S. citizen and has no criminal record.

"No one should fear being jailed for speaking out in this country,” said Khalil's attorney Alina Das, a co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law. “We are overjoyed that Mr. Khalil will finally be reunited with his family while we continue to fight his case in court.”

McLaughlin, the DHS representative, said the government will continue to litigate the matter.

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America," she said. "The Trump Administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detain Khalil, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and damages property."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cited an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to justify Khalil’s removal, arguing he poses a national security risk.

The Cold War-era statute gives the secretary of state authority to “personally determine” whether Khalil should remain in the country, the administration has argued.

But Khalil's backers have insisted that the government's actions are meant to stifle free speech on college campuses and silence opponents of Israel's ongoing military action in Gaza.

Six weeks after being released from federal detention, Mahmoud Khalil, the first student pro-Palestinian protest leader to be arrested by the Trump administration last spring, said concerns about antisemitism at Columbia University reflected a “manufactured hysteria.”

Khalil first made the allegation in a jailhouse letter in April, soon after he was detained by immigration authorities over his role in the university’s pro-Palestinian protests, which critics said were fueling antisemitism.

He repeated it in a wide-ranging interview with New York Times columnist Ezra Klein published on Tuesday. The interview appears to mark the most extensive public questioning that Khalil has faced about the allegations of antisemitic activity that made him a symbol of the Trump administration’s crackdown on colleges.

In the interview, Klein delved into Khalil’s arrest on March 10, which stemmed from allegations that he had fueled antisemitism on Columbia University’s campus, and subsequent 3-month detainment at an ICE detention center in Louisiana. In June, in Khalil’s first interview since he was released from federal detention, he told the NYT that his detainment “felt like kidnapping.”

During the interview, Klein repeatedly invoked his Jewish identity, but when he brought up his personal experience with antisemitism and allegations of antisemitism at Columbia University, Khalil pushed back.

“Look, I’m Jewish. I don’t take antisemitism lightly. You should see my inbox. And it can be true that Jews can be unsafe, but the idea — it is real that there was antisemitism at Columbia, yet nobody there ended up as unsafe as you did,” said Klein.
“I would push back regarding antisemitism at Columbia. I would really push back on that,” replied Khalil, to which Klein responded, “There was none?”

“I wouldn’t say there was none. I would say there is this manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia because of the protests,” Khalil replied.

He added, “Proud Boys were at the doors of Columbia, the very right-wing group. And there are incidents here and there. But it’s not like antisemitism is happening at Columbia because of the Palestine movement.”

Khalil’s arrest in March by immigration authorities marked a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s campaign against antisemitism on college campuses. In its wake, several other non-citizen pro-Palestinian student protesters faced arrests and deportation efforts, prompting outcry and calls for due process, including from many Jewish groups.

Million-dollar settlement with federal gov't
Last month, Columbia, where Khalil earned a graduate degree, reached a $221 million settlement with the federal government over antisemitism allegations. In June, the school released a report that found that nearly two-thirds of its Jewish students reported not feeling accepted for their religious identity during the school year that included Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

“This is why I would always push back,” continued Khalil in his response to Klein’s invocation of antisemitism at Columbia. “I have a strong belief that antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism rise together. The incidents rise together because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways.”

Khalil also defended the phrases “Globalize the intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which pro-Palestinian activists say are nonviolent but many Jews interpret as calls to violence. He also said that Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack violated international law because it targeted civilians but characterized it as inevitable.

Early in the interview, Klein asked Khalil whether he thought Hamas attacked Israel to provoke “some kind of war,” or whether he saw it “as something that needed to happen to break the equilibrium” in a conflict that had stagnated

“It’s more the latter — just to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard,” said Khalil. “And to me, it’s a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here, that Palestinians are part of the equation. That was my interpretation of why Hamas did the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.”