A Palestinian activist who participated in demonstrations against Israel was released from federal immigration detention after 104 days.
Mahmoud KhalilWho became a symbol of President Donald Trump’s repression on campus demonstrations, left a federal installation in Louisiana on Friday. On Saturday, he welcomed friends and briefly spoke to journalists at New Jersey’s New Jersey International Airport after leaving the detention center in Louisiana.
He pushed his son’s stroller with a lower age with a hand and pumped his fist in the air with the other while the supporters welcomed him at home.
Mahmoud Khalil, center, reacts to supporters alongside his wife, Noor Abdallah, second on the left
Seth Wenig / The Associated Press
Former student graduated from the University of Columbia, he promised to continue to protest against the War of Israel in Gaza.
“The US government is funding this genocide and Columbia University is investing in this genocide,” he said. “This is why I will continue to protest with each of you. Not only if they threaten me with detention. Even if they would kill me, I would always speak for Palestine. ”
Khalil, a legal American resident whose woman gave birth during her 104 days of detention, said he would also speak for immigrants he had left in the detention center.
“Whether you are a citizen, immigrant, anyone in this country, you are not illegal. It doesn’t make you less a human,” he said.
Mahmoud Khalil, on the right, speaks to the representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., after his arrival at Newark International Airport, Saturday June 21, 2025, in Newark, NJ
Seth Wenig / The Associated Press
Joining Khalil at the airport, American representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York said that her detention had violated the first amendment and was “an affront to each American”.
“He was accused, without foundation, of horrible allegations simply because the Trump administration and our global establishment do not agree with his political speech,” she said.
“The Trump administration knows that it is leading a losing legal battle,” added Ocasio-Cortez. “They violate the law and know that they violate the law.”
Here is an overview of what has happened so far in the legal battle of Khalil:
Arrest
Federal immigration agents arrested Khalil on March 8, the First arrest Under the repression of Trump against the students who joined the demonstrations of the campus against the devastating war of Israel in Gaza.
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Khalil, an American legal resident, was then taken to an immigration detention center in Jena, a remote part of Louisiana thousands of kilometers from her lawyers and his wife.
The 30 -year -old international business student had served as negotiator and spokesperson For militant students from Columbia University who took over a campus lawn to protest against the war.
The university brought the police to dismantle the camp after a small group of demonstrators seized an administrative building. Khalil was not accused of having participated in the occupation of the building and was not among those arrested in connection with the demonstrations.
But the images of his face without mask during demonstrations, as well as his desire to share his name with the journalists, made him an object of contempt among those who saw the demonstrators and their requests as anti -Semites.
File – Student of the University of Columbia, Mahmoud Khalil (C), speaks to the press during the press briefing organized by pro -Palestinian demonstrators who set up a new campus on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University on Friday evening in New York on June 1, 2024.
Selcuk Acar / Getty images
Legal struggle
Khalil was not accused of having violated the laws during the demonstrations of Columbia.
However, the government said that the non-citizens participating in such demonstrations should be expelled from the United States to express points of view that the administration considers anti-Semitic and “pro-Hamas”, referring to the Palestinian militant group which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
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 to the American Constitution.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified Khalil’s expulsion by citing a rarely used law which gives him the power to deport those who pose “early consequences of potentially serious foreign policy for the United States”.
The initial decision
Immigration judge Jamee E. Comans judged in April that the government’s assertion was sufficient to meet the requirements of Khalil’s expulsion.
COMANS said the government had “established clear and convincing evidence that it was removable”.
The federal judges of New York and New Jersey had previously ordered the United States government not to expel Khalil while his business took place in court.
Khalil remained Detained for several weeksWith his lawyers arguing that he was prevented from exercising his freedom of expression and his rights to regular procedure despite any obvious reason for his continuous detention.
Release granted
Khalil was released after the American district judge Michael Farbiarz said that it would be “very unusual” that the government continues to have a legal resident who was unlikely to flee and had not been accused of any violence.
“The petitioner is not a risk of theft, and the evidence presented is that it is not a danger to the community,” he said. “Period, complete.”
During a one -hour hearing led by phone, the judge based in New Jersey said that the government had “clearly not respected” the standards of detention.
Speaking Friday outside the detention center, Khalil said: “Justice has prevailed, but it has been long awaited. It should not have taken three months.”
A people gathered in Foley Square, outside the Manhattan Federal Court, in support of Mahmoud Khalil, Wednesday March 12, 2025 in New York.
Stefan Jeremiah / The Associated Press
The legal struggle continues
The government filed an opinion on Friday evening that it is attractive to the release of Khalil.
The Ministry of Internal Security declared in an article on the social platform X that on the same day, Farbiarz had ordered the release of Khalil, an immigration judge in Louisiana rejected Khalil Bond and “ordered him to withdraw”. This decision was taken by Comans, which is in a court in the same detention center of which Khalil was released.
“An immigration judge, not a district judge, has the power to decide whether Mr. Khalil must be released or detained,” said the post.
Farbiarz ruled that the government cannot expel Khalil according to his assertions that his presence could undermine foreign policy. But he gave the administrative room for maneuver to continue a potential expulsion on the basis of allegations according to which Khalil lied at his request for a green card, an accusation of Khalil.
DOSSIER – The student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is on the campus of Columbia University in New York during a pro -Palestinian protest camp on April 29, 2024.
AP photo / ted shaffrey, file)
Khalil had to give up his passport and cannot travel internationally, but he will recover his green card and receive official documents allowing limited trips to the United States, notably New York and Michigan to visit the family, New Jersey and Louisiana for legal appearances and Washington to put pressure on the Congress.
Khalil said on Friday that no one should be detained for protesting the War of Israel in Gaza. He said that his stay in the Jena detention center in Louisiana had shown her “a different reality from this country which supposedly defends human rights and freedom and justice”. In a statement after the judge’s decision, Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said that she could finally “push a sigh of relief” after her husband’s three months in detention.
The judge’s decision reached after several other targeted researchers for their activism were released from the guard, including another former Palestinian student in Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; A student from TUFTS University, Rumeysa Ozturk; And a scholarship holder from the University of Georgetown, Badar Khan Suri.