Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil has walked out of an immigration detention center in rural Louisiana where he was locked up for more than three months for his campus activism against Israel’s war in Gaza.
A federal judge ordered his release hours earlier on Friday and rebuked Donald Trump’s administration for its “highly, highly unusual” decision to hold him there, with no evidence he committed any crime, and after the judge’s determination that his detention and threat of removal from the country over First Amendment-protected speech is unconstitutional.
“Justice prevailed, but it’s long overdue,” said Khalil, wearing a keffiyeh wrapped around his shoulders. “This should not have taken three months. I leave some incredible men — more than 1,000 people, behind me — in a place where they should not have been.”
The Trump administration “are doing their best to dehumanize everyone here,” he said.
He is returning to New York, where he looks forward to embracing his wife and son, who was born while he was in custody.
The judge’s order is the latest in a string of high-profile losses for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration in its campaign against international student activists arrested and threatened with removal from the country over their pro-Palestinian activism.
During a bail hearing on Friday, New Jersey District Judge Michael Farbiarz said Khalil poses no danger to the community and is not a flight risk. “Period, full stop,” he said.
Following the order, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that only an immigration judge, not a federal district judge, “has the authority” to decide whether he can be released, despite a series of federal court rulings granting the release of student activists the administration has sought to remove from the country while their legal challenges continue.
Lawyers for the Trump administration appealed the order for his release on Friday night.
Yet the immigration judge presiding over Khalil’s case, Jamee Comans, determined on Friday that Khalil could be deported based the government’s allegations against him.
“On the same day an immigration judge denied Khalil bond and ordered him removed, one rogue district judge ordered him released,” Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “This is yet another example of how out-of-control members of the judicial branch are undermining national security.”
Khalil was stripped of his green card and arrested in front of his then-pregnant wife in their New York City apartment building on March 8. He was then sent to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, roughly 1,300 miles away from their home in New York.
Following his arrest, Khalil was accused of “antisemitic activities” for his role in campus-wide demonstrations against Israel’s war, allegations Khalil and his legal team have resoundingly rejected.
Officials concede that Khalil did not commit any crime, but Rubio has sought to justify Khalil’s arrest by invoking a rarely used law claiming that Khalil’s presence in the United States undermines foreign policy interests of preventing antisemitism.
Khalil and his attorneys and critics have argued that the administration has broadly sought to conflate criticism of Israel’s war with antisemitism, dovetailing with the president’s threats to college campuses and an anti-immigration agenda.
“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,” Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s wife, said in a statement.
“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 added. “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.”
On June 11, Judge Farbiarz ruled that the administration had unconstitutionally wielded the law against Khalil, whose “career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled,” the judge wrote.
The government has “little or no interest in applying the relevant underlying statutes in what is likely an unconstitutional way,” Farbiarz added.
The judge said the government could not detain and deport him on those spurious legal grounds.
Khalil and his legal team argue his arrest and detention — and attempted removal from the country, which is currently blocked by court order — are retaliatory violations of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech and his Fifth Amendment right to due process of law, among other claims.
His arrest sparked international outrage over the Trump administration’s attempts to crush campus dissent. Rubio has said he “proudly” revoked hundreds of student visas over campus activism, leading to several high-profile arrests of international scholars.
Khalil, who is Palestinian, grew up in a refugee camp in Syria. He entered the United States on a student visa in 2022 to pursue a master’s degree in public administration, which he completed last year.
He missed his graduation ceremony last month.
“As someone who fled persecution in Syria for my political beliefs, for who I am, I never imagined myself to be in immigration detention, here in the United States,” Khalil wrote in a sworn declaration in court filings.
Khalil’s wife gave birth to their son in April. They met for the first and only time before an immigration court hearing last month.
“Instead of holding my wife’s hand in the delivery room, I was crouched on a detention center floor, whispering through a crackling phone line as she labored alone,” Khalil wrote in court filings. “I listened to her pain, trying to comfort her while 70 other men slept around me. When I heard my son’s first cries, I buried my face in my arms so no one would see me weep.”
