A federal judge on Friday ordered the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and former pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University who has been detained for more than three months.
U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said Khalil is not a flight risk nor a danger to the community, “period, full stop.” Given those findings, and others, he said it’s “highly, highly unusual” that the government is still seeking Khalil’s detention.
“Together, they suggest that there is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner — and, of course, that would be unconstitutional,” the judge said.
Khalil’s detention was the first in the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students with ties to pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses, whom Secretary of State Marco Rubio deemed threats to the nation’s foreign policy.
While in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, Khalil missed the birth of his first child.
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