A federal judge in New Jersey on Friday ordered the Trump administration to release Mahmoud Khalil from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.
Judge Michael Farbiarz granted a request from Khalil’s legal team that he be released on bail, according to multiple outlets. It is the latest development in what has been a protracted and high-profile legal battle between the green card holder and the Trump administration.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was active in pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University, has been in ICE detention since March. His arrest garnered national attention after video showed officers handcuffing him next to his then-pregnant wife. Since then, he’s missed the birth of their son and spent months in a detention center in Louisiana.
“After more than three months we can finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Mahmoud is on his way home,” said Dr. Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s wife, in a release from the American Civil Liberties Union. “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. But today we are celebrating.”
After a ruling last week that invalidated the Trump administration’s reasons for holding Khalil, government lawyers brought new accusations against Khalil to court, arguing that he purposely left out information about his affiliations with various nonprofits on his green card application. Farbiarz ruled that Khalil should be released regardless because he is not a flight risk.
Farbiarz also previously ruled against the Trump administration’s reason for detaining Khalil, a little-used provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act the administration said gave it power to deport someone whose presence poses “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” on orders from the secretary of state. While the judge at the time left open the possibility that the administration could hold him for other reasons, Farbiarz ruled that the government’s determinations about Khalil’s activism interfered with his First Amendment rights.
“True justice would mean Mahmoud was never taken away from us in the first place, that no Palestinian father, from New York to Gaza, would have to endure the painful separation of prison walls like Mahmoud has,” Abdalla said in a statement released by the ACLU after that order. “I will not rest until Mahmoud is free.”
The ruling is the latest in a string of losses for the Trump administration over its apprehension of student activists. Others, like Rümeysa Öztürk and Badar Khan Suri, have also been released following court rulings.
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Nuha Dolby and Casey Murray are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated with additional reporting.