{"id":50,"date":"2025-06-20T19:36:24","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T19:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/50\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T19:36:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T19:36:24","slug":"us-judge-orders-release-of-pro-palestinian-advocate-mahmoud-khalil-israel-iran-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/50\/","title":{"rendered":"US judge orders release of pro-Palestinian advocate Mahmoud Khalil | Israel-Iran conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"

DEVELOPING STORY<\/strong>DEVELOPING STORY, <\/p>\n

The wife of the jailed Columbia University graduate student says the family \u2018can finally breathe a sigh of relief\u2019.<\/p>\n

A federal judge in the United States has ordered the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil<\/a>, who has been detained since March by immigration authorities over his involvement in Palestinian rights protests at Columbia University.<\/p>\n

The decision on Friday to grant Khalil bail came from a federal court in New Jersey, where Khalil\u2019s lawyers are challenging his detention. It is separate from the legal push against his deportation that will continue to take place in immigration courts.<\/p>\n

District court Judge Michael Farbiarz ordered the release of Khalil on Friday, but it is not clear when exactly he will be freed. The court scheduled a conference call to discuss the terms of his release at 3:30pm local time (19:30 GMT).<\/p>\n

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been advocating on Khalil\u2019s behalf, said he will be returning to New York to be with his family.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a joyous day for Mahmoud, for his family, and for everyone\u2019s First Amendment rights,\u201d ACLU lawyer Noor Zafar said in a statement, referring to the US constitutional provision that protects free speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince he was arrested in early March, the government has acted at every turn to punish Mahmoud for expressing his political beliefs about Palestine. But today\u2019s ruling underscores a vital First Amendment<\/a> principle: The government cannot abuse immigration law to punish speech it disfavors.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was the first known activist to be detained and have his legal immigration status revoked by the administration of President Donald Trump over involvement in student protests.<\/p>\n

His case gained national attention, especially after the authorities denied him the chance to witness the birth of his firstborn son<\/a> in April.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter 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,\u201d said Noor Abdalla, Khalil\u2019s wife, in a statement.<\/p>\n

Khalil was not charged with any crime. Instead, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has used a rarely used provision of an immigration law that allows him to order the removal of noncitizens if they are deemed to have \u201cpotentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences\u201d for the US.<\/p>\n

\u2018Poster child\u2019 for free speech<\/p>\n

Advocates have argued that the crackdown violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has also been criticised for sending immigration authorities, sometimes masked and in plainclothes, to detain the students instead of allowing them to remain free while they challenge their deportation.<\/p>\n

Several other students that the Trump administration is looking to deport have been ordered released by federal courts, including Turkish Tufts University scholar Rumeysa Ozturk and Columbia\u2019s Mohsen Mahdawi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ozturk was detained over co-authoring an op-ed calling on her school to abide by the student government\u2019s call for divesting from companies involved in Israeli abuses against Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Khalil, who lived with his wife, a US citizen, in New York, has been detained in rural Louisiana \u2013 an effort that his supporters say aims to keep him away from his family and lawyers and transfer him to a more conservative rural jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera\u2019s Kimberly Halkett said Khalil\u2019s release is a \u201cblow to the Trump administration\u201d, which has insisted that he must remain in detention while making his immigration case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line in all of this is that he has really become sort of a poster child for those who are advocating for free speech in the United States,\u201d Halkett said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY, The wife of the jailed Columbia University graduate student says the family \u2018can finally breathe…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":51,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[69,70,71,50,67,68,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-50","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-gaza","11":"tag-israel-iran-conflict","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-us-canada"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114717379069508319","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}