A U.S. federal judge ordered Mahmoud Khalil, Columbia University’s anti-Israel protest leader, to be released on bail on Friday.
Michael Farbiarz, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, determined that Khalil, who has been held in Louisiana for deportation proceedings since March, was not a flight risk.
The judge noted that Khalil was married to a U.S. citizen and had a U.S. citizen child, declaring that Khalil “is not a danger to the community. Period, full stop,” the Associated Press reported.
Khalil is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent who was born in Syria and held legal permanent residency in the United States after finishing his master’s degree at Columbia in 2024. Federal agents arrested him in March after he spent months leading and serving as a spokesman for Columbia’s unsanctioned anti-Israel Apartheid Divest coalition.
The government argued that removing Khalil from the country was a “compelling foreign-policy interest” and that he had committed immigration fraud in failing to disclose that he had worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” wrote U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Farbiarz previously said that the government’s determination that Khalil could be removed on foreign policy grounds was likely unconstitutional, but allowed the fraud charge to stand.
“It is highly, highly unusual to be seeking detention of a petitioner given the factual record of today,” the judge said during Friday’s hearing, the AP reported.
Khalil’s supporters welcomed the ruling as a victory for free speech.
“His prolonged detention—without charges—is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights to free speech and raises serious constitutional concerns,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote. “Today’s decision is a welcome rebuke of the Trump administration’s weaponization of antisemitism for their own political gain.”
Under Friday’s ruling, deportation proceedings against Khalil can continue while he is released on bail.