Pro-Palestinian protest leader Khalil released from US custody

Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil walked out of a Louisiana immigrant detention center on Friday, hours after a judge ordered his release, a major victory for rights groups that challenged what they called the Trump administration’s unlawful targeting of a pro-Palestinian activist.

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"Although justice prevailed," he said upon his release in the rural town of Jena, "it's long, very long overdue. And this shouldn't have taken three months."

On March 8 Khalil, a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel's war in Gaza, was arrested by immigration agents in the lobby of his university residence in Manhattan. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has called the protests antisemitic and vowed to deport foreign students who took part. Khalil became the first target of this policy.

Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the government wrongly conflates their criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza with antisemitism and their advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for extremism. After hearing oral arguments from lawyers for Khalil and the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, ordered DHS to release him from custody at a jail for immigrants in rural Louisiana by 6:30pm on Friday.

Farbiarz said the government had made no attempt to rebut evidence provided by Khalil's lawyers that he was not a flight risk or a danger to the public.