Pro-Palestinian Activist Khalil To Remain Behind Bars For Now

A federal judge has ruled that pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil will remain in ICE custody, after the Trump administration shifted legal strategy and found a new justification to keep him detained.

Khalil, a green card holder and former lead agitator for Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment, was initially set to be released Friday morning by court order. But that order never took effect, reports said.

Instead, the federal government argued that Khalil failed to fully disclose parts of his past work history when applying for permanent residency, and that alone was grounds for removal, NewsNation reported.

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That was enough to convince District Judge Michael Farbiarz to keep Khalil behind bars.

“Khalil is now detained based on that other charge of removability,” government lawyers said. “Detaining Khalil based on that other ground of removal is lawful.”

This new tactic came just two days after Farbiarz ruled that Khalil could not be detained based solely on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s determination that he posed a threat to U.S. foreign policy. That ruling sent the government back to the drawing board.

“To be sure, it might be argued that the Petitioner would be detained anyway,” the judge said on Wednesday. “After all, as noted above, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to remove the Petitioner based not only on the Secretary of State’s determination, but also on a second basis, the Petitioner’s alleged failure to accurately complete his lawful permanent resident application.”

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By Friday morning, the Biden-era legal argument was out the window. In its place, the Trump administration leaned hard into the immigration paperwork issue.

The timing was likely not an accident.

The judge had originally ordered Khalil to be released by 9:30 a.m. on Friday. That hour came and went. Khalil stayed in custody. His lawyers quickly filed an emergency motion demanding that the judge clarify that his release was required.

Farbiarz gave the Trump administration until 1:30 p.m. to respond, which is when they dropped the new justification.

Khalil has now been locked up for more than three months. He was arrested on March 8, making him the first known activist detained as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students and visa holders involved in campus unrest.

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Since then, he has missed one of the most important moments of his life, the birth of his first child.

“The most immediate and visceral harms I have experienced directly relate to the birth of my son, Deen,” Khalil wrote in a recent court filing. “Instead of holding my wife’s hand in the delivery room, I was crouched on a detention center floor, whispering through a crackling phone line as she labored alone.”

“I listened to her pain, trying to comfort her while 70 other men slept around me,” he added.

Khalil, an Algerian national, became a symbolic figure during the campus protests that engulfed Columbia University last spring. He served as the face of the pro-Palestinian encampment that took over large portions of the Ivy League campus and ignited headlines across the country.

But while he has remained locked up, other activists have been released while their immigration cases move forward in court. That inconsistency has sparked renewed scrutiny from advocacy groups who say Khalil is being singled out.

For now, the Trump administration appears determined to keep him detained, and this time, it’s using his green card paperwork as the hook.

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With the legal fight far from over and the administration preparing for broader enforcement actions this summer, Khalil’s case could set the tone for how the federal government handles foreign nationals tied to the pro-Palestinian protest movement.

Whether he stays detained in the weeks to come will depend on what the courts decide.