After being detained by ICE for 104 days, after being unable to walk in his graduation, and after missing the birth of his child, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released on bail on Friday.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States, has become the most high-profile anti-war, pro-Palestine student to be targeted by President Donald Trump and his administration. His release from a federal immigration detention center in rural Louisiana on Friday marks a key turning point in Trump’s continued legal battle against Khalil and other student activists across the nation. While the administration has already appealed his release, Khalil is being reunited with his wife and his young son in New York.
“Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this,” Khalil said moments after being released, adding, “that doesn’t mean that there’s 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, that is investing in the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
“No one is illegal, no human is illegal,” Khalil continued. “Justice will prevail. No matter what this administration may try to portray “
Khalil shared about his experience inside La Salle Detention Facility, an ICE processing location where many immigrants are being held as a part of Trump’s coordinated anti-migrant campaign.
“The moment you enter this facility, your rights leave you behind,” he said. “So once you enter there you see a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and liberty and justice. But once you cross, literally, that door, you see the opposite side of what is actually happening in this country—under just the eyes of everyone.”
Khalil’s winding legal battle began on March 8 when plainclothes Homeland Security agents arrested him at his university apartment and threatened to arrest his then-eight-months-pregnant wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, who is a citizen. The Trump administration has painted Khalil as a threat to national security, with the president calling him a “radical foreign pro-Hamas Student”; Secretary of State Marco Rubio, by invoking a rarely cited law, also claimed that Khalil’s presence in the country threatened the administration’s foreign policy goal of preventing antisemitism—and justified his deportation.
Khalil’s lawyers, family, and several colleagues connected to Columbia have held that this portrayal of him is demonstrably false.
On Friday, the administration’s efforts were derailed after a judge in Khalil’s case, Michael Farbiarz of Federal District Court in Newark, found that there was “at least something” to the argument that there had been “an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil” for protesting the US and Columbia University’s involvement in Israel’s ongoing offensive in Palestine. “And, of course, that would be unconstitutional,” Farbiarz added. The judge called the government’s behavior in Khalil’s case “highly, highly, highly unusual.”
“He is not a danger to the community,” Farbiarz said. “Period, full stop.”
A spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, Tricia McLaughlin, criticized Farbiarz on Friday, saying, “An immigration judge, not a district judge, has the authority to decide if Mr. Khalil should be released or detained.”
Other judges have challenged the Trump administration’s holding of pro-Palestinian students, too. Other high-profile detainees, including Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Badar Khan Suri, have already been freed.
These four students—and many more across the nation—have been attempting to draw attention to Israel’s actions in Gaza. As of June 11, Israeli military actions have killed 55,104 people and wounded 127,394 more, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The death toll is likely much higher, according to researchers.
Khalil’s wife, Abdalla, who recorded his initial capture, has spent the last three months fighting for her husband’s release.
Following the judge’s ruling on Friday, Abdalla said, “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.”
“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 continued, “But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family.”
As Khalil walked away from the federal facility on Friday, he spoke of what he would do next: hug his wife and son. He also spoke of the people unable to walk out with him.
“I leave some incredible men behind me. Over 1,000 people behind me,” Khalil said. “The hundreds of men whom I left behind me shouldn’t be there in the first place,” he continued, “The Trump administration is doing their best to dehumanize everyone here. Whether you are a US citizen, an immigrant, or just a person on this land, it doesn’t mean that you are less of a human.”
Khalil said that he hopes the next time he visits the town of Jena, Louisiana, home to the federal detention center where he was detained for over three months, it will be to visit a museum illustrating “America’s racist policies against immigrants.”
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