US judge orders release of pro-Palestinian protest leader

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to release Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, US media reported.

Khalil, a legal permanent US resident who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, has been in custody since March facing potential deportation.

District Judge Michael Fabiarz ordered Khalil’s release on bail during a hearing on Friday, multiple US media outlets said.

Since his March 8 arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Khalil has become a symbol of President Donald Trump’s desire to stifle pro-Palestinian student activism against the Gaza war, in the name of curbing anti-Semitism.

At the time a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, Khalil was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Following his arrest, the US authorities transferred Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from his home in New York to a detention center in Louisiana, pending deportation.

His wife Noor Abdalla, a Michigan-born dentist, gave birth to their son while Khalil was in detention.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked a law approved during the 1950s Red Scare that allows the United States to remove foreigners seen as adverse to US foreign policy.

Fabiarz ruled last week that the government could not detain or deport Khalil based on Rubio’s assertions that his presence on US soil poses a national security threat.