Judge Orders Release of Former Columbia University Student Mahmoud Khalil

The AP reported that U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ordered the U.S. government to release former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from the immigration detention center where he has been held since early March. On June 13, Farbiarz declined to release Khalil, finding that the government’s allegation that Khalil lied on his green card allegation provided sufficient cause for Khalil to remain detained. Yet on Friday, Khalil ruled from the bench that the “government had ‘clearly not met’ the standards for detention.”

In his ruling, Farbiarz “said it would be ‘highly, highly unusual’ for the government to continue to detain a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.” According to the AP, in his ruling, Farbiarz said that Khalil “is not a flight risk and the evidence presented is that he is not a danger to the community. …. Period, full stop.”

According to the AP, Farbiarz ruled that Khalil “must surrender his passport and can’t travel internationally, but he will get his green card back and be given official documents permitting limited travel within the country.”

The AP notes that Khalil “was the first person arrested under President Donald Trump ’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s devastating war in Gaza.” Diverse previously reported that Khalil served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists at Columbia University who occupied a campus lawn last spring. Khalil is Palestinian and was born in Syria after his grandparents were forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Tiberias.