BREAKING: Mahmoud Khalil Released From ICE Detention
Khalil’s arrest was the first in a string of abductions that expanded into a much larger operation against pro-Palestine international students.
Palestinian Columbia University student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil walked out of a Louisiana ICE detention center on Friday after a federal judge ordered he be released on bail.
Khalil, a green card holder, was detained by masked immigration agents in the lobby of his Columbia-owned housing in March. Khalil’s arrest was the first in a string of abductions that expanded into a much larger operation against student protesters and international students generally.
"Although justice prevailed, it's very long overdue,” Khalil told reporters just after his release. “This shouldn't have taken three months.”
The Trump administration targeted Khalil on the spurious and previously little-tested grounds that he was compromising US foreign policy – a determination made personally by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Khalil, as with other students and academics targeted in this way, was not accused of committing an actual crime.
Judge Michael E. Farbiarz’s decision on Friday, comes after the release of several other high-profile targets of the administration, including Mohsen Mahdawi, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Badar Khan Suri.
Earlier this month, Farbiarz had barred the Trump administration from continuing to detain or attempt to deport Khalil based on Rubio’s foreign policy determination, saying such detention was causing Khalil “irreparable harm.” But last week, the Trump administration changed its legal strategy at the eleventh hour, arguing it could still detain Khalil on the charges the government threw against him after they arrested him, including that he allegedly intentionally misrepresented his employment history on his green card application.
On Friday, Farbiarz ruled that those allegations did not require Khalil to be detained, saying the government’s efforts to keep him in ICE detention were "highly, highly unusual."
“There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil,” Farbiarz said. “And of course that would be unconstitutional.”
No Warrant
In early March, plainclothes agents arrested Khalil, telling him his visa had been revoked. He responded that he had a green card. The agents, confused, then said that was revoked too. His attorney, Amy Greer, who was on the phone amid the chaos, demanded a warrant. Agents hung up on her instead.
ICE agents then took Khalil over 1,000 miles away from his home to a detention facility in Louisiana.
The government has admitted it did not have a warrant when it detained Khalil. It claimed it had the authority to arrest him anyhow, because “it was likely he would escape before they could obtain a warrant,” and because he was a “flight risk.” But security footage shows that Khalil was cooperating the entire time, even seeming to casually chat with the arresting agents.
During his time in detention, Khalil missed the birth of his first baby, as well as Columbia’s graduation. ICE rejected his attempts to be detained closer to his wife and new child.
Khalil’s case, as with the other targeted students’, will continue, but it will continue with him free – three months after his arrest – from ICE detention.
Asked what he plans to do when he first gets back to New York, Khalil said: “just hug my wife and son.”
If you are a student affected by this or someone who works in or around the US government with relevant information about these developments, please contact me via email or Signal (premthakker.35).
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional details.
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He Never should be arrested...
I'd like to see him get an ACLU legal team to file a lawsuit against the organizations and people behind his stupid and undoubtedly illegal abduction.