US student Mahmoud Khalil detained for pro-Palestinian protests released from immigration detention

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released Friday from federal immigration detention after 104 days by a judge's ruling after becoming a symbol of President Donald Trump 's clampdown on campus protests.
The former Columbia University graduate student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday where he travelled to New York to meet his wife and son who was born while Mr Khalil was detained.
Speaking to reporters at Newark International Airport, New Jersey he said: 'The US government is funding this genocide, and Columbia University is investing in this genocide."
'This is why I will continue to protest with everyone of you. Not only if they threaten me with detention. Even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.'
'Whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone in this land, you're not illegal. That doesn't make you less of a human,' he said.
Mr Khalil wasn't accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia.
However, the government has said noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the US for expressing views the administration considers to be antisemitic and 'pro-Hamas,' referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Mr Khalil, was released after US District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be 'highly, highly unusual' for the government to continue detaining a legal US resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn't been accused of any violence. The government filed notice Friday evening that it is appealing Mr Khalil's release.
Federal immigration agents detained Mr Khalil on March 8, the first arrest under Trump's crackdown on students participating in the protests on university campuses.
Mr Khalil was then taken to an immigration detention center in Jena, a remote part of Louisiana thousands of miles from his attorneys and his wife.
The 30-year-old international affairs student had served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists at Columbia University who took over a campus lawn to protest the war.
Khalil's lawyers challenged the legality of his detention, arguing that the Trump administration was trying to deport him for an activity protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified Khalil's deportation by citing a rarely used statute that gives him power to deport those who pose 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.'
Joining Mr Khalil at the airport, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said his detention violated the First Amendment and was 'an affront to every American.'
'He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,' she said.
'The Trump administration knows that they are waging a losing legal battle," Ocasio-Cortez added. "They are violating the law, and they know that they are violating the law.'

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