A judge granted Khalil’s release following a ruling saying he could not be deported or detained under the Trump administration’s justification for his arrest.
Key Facts
Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled following a hearing Friday that Khalil can be released on bail, according to multiple outlets, determining Khalil is not a flight risk or a danger to the community.
Farbiarz ordered Khalil to be released from detention on Friday, rejecting the Trump administration’s request to delay his release by a week so that they could appeal the ruling.
The judge previously found the Trump administration couldn’t detain Khalil based on its primary argument—that his detention was necessary because it posed a risk to foreign policy—but the government was still trying to keep him imprisoned on a smaller secondary accusation on failing to provide some information on his green card application, which Farbiarz noted is not usually grounds for detention.
Khalil has been in prison since he was first arrested March 8 at his New York City residence, and President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio pointed to Khalil’s pro-Palestinian activism as the reason behind his arrest, with Rubio saying, “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
The Columbia University activist’s case has been tied up in court since, and while court previously rebuffed the Trump administration’s effort to have legal proceedings moved from New Jersey to Louisiana—where they’d likely be heard by a more Trump-friendly judge—no judge had yet ordered Khalil’s release.
Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, praised the court’s decision in a statement Friday, saying, “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 [Khalil’s newborn son] Deen, who never should have been separated from his father.
