First Amendment

A Judge's Order Freeing Mahmoud Khalil Is Yet Another Loss for the Trump Administration's Immigration Agenda

A federal judge didn't buy the Trump administration's claims about why it was keeping Khalil in an federal immigration detention center.

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A protest sign that reads Free Mahmoud | Jimin Kim/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom
(Jimin Kim/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom)

A federal judge ordered the release of Mahmoud Khalil from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Louisiana on Friday, three months after Khalil became a major target of the Trump administration's campaign to deport student visa holders for speaking in favor of Palestine and participating in pro-Palestine protests.

U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of the District of New Jersey found that Khalil posed little to no flight risk and that his ongoing detention was unusual enough to plausibly suggest, as Khalil's lawyers argued, that he was being targeted for his political speech. 

"There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil," Farbiarz said. "And of course that would be unconstitutional."

Farbiarz rejected a request by Justice Department lawyers to stay his order to give the government time to appeal, and instead said he would order Khalil to be immediately released and allowed to return to New York, where his wife and newborn child, both U.S. citizens, live.

"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," Noor Abdalla, Khalil's wife, said in a New York Civil Liberties Union press release. "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."

Khalil still faces deportation, but his ordered release from custody is another embarrassing loss for President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, which the president is losing in both the legal courts and the court of public opinion.

"I think we can say that Donald Trump has lost the political battle when it comes to what's happened in Los Angeles," CNN's Harry Enten said on Friday, pointing to recent polling showing the Trump adminstration's recent actions in Los Angeles had a net approval rating of negative 15 points (negative 24 points among independents). Meanwhile, ICE's popularity has declined, with 54 percent of the poll's respondents disapproving of workplace raids.

Khalil, who was arrested in Manhattan on March 8, has not been charged with a crime. Instead, the government has sought his removal under a statute that allows the secretary of state to deport foreign nationals whose activities "would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States." 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed in a memo that Khalil had participated in "antisemitic protests" that "foster[ed] a hostile environment for Jewish students." 

Khalil denies being anti-Semitic, and his lawyers say his arrest, visa revocation, and ongoing detention are all an unconstitutional campaign to punish him for protected First Amendment activity.

Farbiarz's ruling freeing Khalil was not a surprise. A week ago, he issued a preliminary injunction barring the government from removing Khalil from the country based on Rubio's determination that he was a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. Although the government additionally accused Khalil after the fact of omitting information from his visa application, Farbiarz found that Khalil's detention was almost certainly driven by Rubio's determination, which was causing Khalil irreparable harm by chilling his free speech and damaging his career and reputation.

The Trump administration's other high-profile cases against foreign students have suffered similar fates.

Georgetown University graduate student Badar Khan Suri was detained in March and freed on May 14. Romeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University graduate student, was arrested on March 25 for cowriting an anti-Israel op-ed in her school's newspaper, but a judge ordered her released on May 9, finding that her continued detention "potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens." Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was detained at his U.S. citizenship interview but released on April 30.