(Bloomberg)-Columbia University’s postgraduate student detained more than three months over his role in pro-Palestinian protests, was released on Friday from immigration, allowing him to continue the legal struggle to avoid deportation while he was on the bail.
Mahmúd Khalil, 29, was exempt from the Center for Detaining Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana after the judge ordered his release, Khalil’s lawyers said in court. Khalil claimed that he was illegally held in a retaliation for his activities to stand up against the Israeli War in Gaza with Hamas.
Khalil, who was born in Syria and is Palestinian, became a symbol of Trump’s administration against the protests against the campus over the war. The statutory permanent residents were arrested on March 8 in housing outside the premises and finally sent to an ice facility in Louisiana.
“After more than three months, we can finally exhale relief and know that Mahmúd is on his way home to me and Deen, who should never have been separated from his father,” said Khalina’s wife Noor Abdalla in a statement issued by the US Civil Freedoms Union.
US district judge Michael Farbiarz in Newark ordered on Friday to be released. The judge had previously decided that the US could not withhold or deport it only on the basis of the determination of Foreign Minister Marco Rubio that Khalilová participated in the US foreign policy.
The US also argued that Khalil, whose wife and infant son is US citizens, should remain in custody for alleged errors in his application for the green card 2024. However, Farbiarz decided on Friday that he had not rejected these claims. The government later appealed to the judge’s order.
Farbiarz presides the case because Khalil was held in a federal facility in New Jersey when his lawyers filed a petition that questioned his detention. It was taken from New York to New Jersey and finally to the ice center in Louisiana.
The conditions of the release of Khalil were later set on Friday by Judge Michael Hammer. He ordered Khalil to give up his passport and agree that Khalil would allow him to fly home to New York from Louisiana rather than traveling by train.
The case is Khalil v. Joyce, 25-CV-1963, US District Court, New Jersey district (Newark).
(Update of court filing, comment from Khalil’s wife.)
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(Tagstotranslate) Mahmúd Khalil
