Pro-Palestinian activist Khalil walks free after US judge orders release

Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil walked out of a Louisiana immigrant detention centre 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.

"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, US 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 (2330 GMT) 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.

"There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner," Farbiarz said, referring to Khalil as he ruled from the bench, adding that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter was unconstitutional.

Khalil is the latest in a string of foreign pro-Palestinian students arrested in the US since in March who have subsequently been released by judges. They include Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysya Ozturk.

A legal permanent resident of the US, Khalil says he is being punished for his political speech, in violation of the Constitution's First Amendment. Khalil condemned antisemitism and racism in interviews with CNN and other news outlets last year.

Reuters