Mahmoud Khalil to be released from ICE custody after 3 months detained

(CN) — Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil will be released from federal immigration custody on Friday after a judge ruled that his three-month detention was “highly unusual.”

In ordering Khalil’s release by the end of the day, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbairz, a federal judge in New Jersey, found that Khalil is not a flight risk, nor a danger to the community.

“Given all of those factual findings, I’m going to exercise the discretion that I have to order the release of the petitioner in this case,” the Joe Biden appointee said after a two-hour bail hearing.

Throughout the arguments, Farbiarz noted how unorthodox it was for the government to continue seeking the detention of a nonviolent prospective deportee.

The judge also acknowledged that Khalil is married to a U.S. citizen, has a newborn child who is also a U.S. citizen, has job prospects in the country and is a public figure — facts that the government never contested.

“All of that suggests very low flight risk, connections to the United States and publicness in terms of his person,” the judge said.

Justice Department attorney Dhruman Sampat unsuccessfully argued to Farbiarz that he should wait to weigh in until an immigration judge can hear the merits of Khalil’s deportation case.

Farbiarz said waiting would seem like “a waste of time,” given Khalil’s clean record.

Khalil’s attorney Alina Das told the judge that the case meets the “extraordinary circumstance” needed to justify bail, as the Trump administration seeks to chill speech by “sending a message” to pro-Palestinian activists like Khalil.

“This has never been a normal immigration case,” Das said.

In granting his bail request, Farbiarz noted the “chilling effect” that Khalil’s continued detention could have on his First Amendment rights.

The judge immediately shot down the government’s bid to delay Khalil’s release for a week so they can appeal. He also said that ordering Khalil to wear an electronic bracelet would be both inappropriate and unnecessary.

“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 Deen, who never should have been separated from his father,” Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said in a statement. “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 Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family, and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken for speaking out for Palestinian freedom,” Abdalla continued.

Federal agents arrested Khalil, who is a Syrian citizen but a lawful U.S. resident and green card holder, on March 8 in the lobby of his Manhattan apartment building. He quickly filed a habeas petition challenging his detention as unlawful and arbitrary as the government sought to remove him from the country.

For the past three months, Khalil has been detained in a Louisiana immigration facility more than 1,000 miles away from his wife in New York City. He missed the birth of his first child last month while jailed.

He also claims that his lockup damaged his reputation and ability to advocate for Palestinians.

In his June 11 ruling, Farbiarz found that the government didn’t meaningfully contest the harm Khalil’s continued detention was causing him. Citing that harm, as well as Khalil’s lack of a criminal record, he ordered that the Ivy League graduate could no longer be detained on those grounds.

To deport Khalil, the Trump administration is looking to a rarely used provision in immigration law that allows for a noncitizen’s deportation if their presence in the U.S. compromises foreign policy.

Farbiarz ruled that this is a “likely unconstitutionally vague” reason to detain Khalil, however, and ordered that the government release him on those grounds.

But the government also claims that Khalil lied on his permanent residency application by failing to disclose that he interned for UNRWA, a United Nations relief agency that supports Palestinian refugees.

The Trump administration used that justification to keep Khalil locked up for another nine days after Farbiarz’s prior order for release.

“The reason: the evidence is that lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained pending removal for the sort of alleged omissions in a lawful-permanent-resident application that the petitioner is charged with here,” he found.

Khalil claims that he is being unlawfully targeted by the Trump administration for his leadership role in the highly publicized pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last spring. Khalil served as a negotiator on behalf of students, and pushed the university to divest from Israel.

“No one should fear being jailed for speaking out in this country,” Das said Friday after arguing for Khalil in court. “We are overjoyed that Mr. Khalil will finally be reunited with his family while we continue to fight his case in court.”

In March, President Donald Trump said that Khalil was “the first arrest of many to come.”

Since then, several other noncitizens have been arrested and detained for their varying degrees of involvement with pro-Palestinian protests.

Many First Amendment experts have decried the trend as an affront to free speech, while courts around the country have deemed several of the detentions unnecessary and unlawful.

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