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u.s. constitution
Judge: Trump Admin Can't Hold or Deport Mahmoud Khalil 'On Rubio's Say-So'
"This is the news we've been waiting over three months for. Mahmoud must be released immediately and safely returned home to New York to be with me and our newborn baby, Deen," his wife, Noor Abdalla, said.
Jun 11, 2025
The Trump administration cannot detain or deport former Columbia University student and Palestinian solidarity advocate Mahmoud Khalil over the claim that he poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
"The court finds as a matter of fact that [Khalil's] career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled—and this adds up to irreparable harm," U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey wrote in his preliminary injunction.
While judges have ordered the release of other noncitizen student protesters detained by the Trump administration, the ruling marks the first from a federal court to state that the administration cannot deport or detain noncitizens by arguing they pose a threat to foreign policy under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New York said in a statement.
"Today's ruling is a huge win for the Constitution and the rights of citizens and noncitizens alike."
"This is the news we've been waiting over three months for. Mahmoud must be released immediately and safely returned home to New York to be with me and our newborn baby, Deen," Noor Abdalla, Khalil's wife, said in response. "True justice would mean Mahmoud was never taken away from us in the first place, that no Palestinian father, from New York to Gaza, would have to endure the painful separation of prison walls like Mahmoud has."
Khalil, a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, has been held in a detention facility in Louisiana since he was seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from his New York City home in early March, missing the birth of his son. He has not been charged with any crime.
Instead, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that Khalil's participation in student Palestine solidarity protests threatened U.S. foreign policy interests, citing Section 1227 of the U.S. Code.
Farbriarz determined late last month that Rubio's argument was "likely" unconstitutional, but stopped short of granting Khalil a preliminary injunction releasing him from detention. Since then, Khalil's legal team filed new evidence detailing the "irreparable harm" he has experienced due to his detention.
"We are relieved that the court documented what was obvious to the world, which is that the government's vindictive and unconstitutional arrest, detention, and attempted deportation of Mahmoud for his Palestinian activism is causing him and his family agonizing personal and professional harm," said Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights—one of the organizations involved in Khalil's defense. "We look forward to his reunion with his wife and newborn son, and for this remarkable, brilliant man to reclaim his life and his reputation."
Brett Max Kaufman, a member of Khalil's legal team and senior counsel in the ACLU's Center for Democracy, said: "Today's ruling is a huge win for the Constitution and the rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. No one should be imprisoned or deported for their political beliefs, and the three months that Mahmoud has spent in detention are an affront to the freedoms that this country is supposed to stand for."
Fellow legal team member Ramzi Kassem, the co-founder and director of CLEAR, said, "This vindicates what Mahmoud has maintained since day one—that the government cannot detain or deport him based on Rubio's say-so."
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said: "We welcome this ruling as yet another example of our nation's judicial system pushing back against the Trump administration's unconstitutional effort to silence all those who speak out against Israel's genocide in Gaza, and against our government's unconscionable complicity with that genocide. Mahmoud Khalil's unlawful and cruel detention deprived him of his liberty and of being with his wife when she gave birth to their first child. This government's war on First Amendment rights must be challenged by all Americans who value free speech and the Constitution."
Yet while Farbiarz's injunction offers hope to Khalil and his supporters, it does not yet guarantee Khalil's freedom. Farbiarz gave the administration until 9:30 am Friday morning to appeal the ruling, after which time it would take effect.
There is a potential opening for the administration to continue to fight Khalil's release.
As Farbiarz noted, the Trump administration also alleges that Khalil falsified his green card application by omitting his previous work at the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut and with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. However, the judge argued that it was unlikely that this was the underlying cause for Khalil's detention.
"The evidence is that lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained pending removal for the sort of alleged omissions in a lawful-permanent-resident application that the petitioner is charged with here. And that strongly suggests that it is the secretary of state's determination that drives the petitioner's ongoing detention—not the other charge," Farbiaz wrote in granting the injunction.
Still, The New York Times reported that it was "not clear that [Khalil] would be released on Friday if the government were to argue that those allegations were, in fact, the reason for his detention."
Khalil's legal team and family vowed to keep working for his release.
"Today was the first step to justice, but we will not stop fighting until Mahmoud is home with his wife and child," Dratel & Lewis associate Amy Greer said.
Noor Abdalla concluded, "I will not rest until Mahmoud is free, and hope that he can be with us to experience his first Father's Day at home in New York with Deen in his arms."
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Judge Rules Trump Admin's Detention of Mahmoud Khalil 'Likely' Unconstitutional
"Every day Mahmoud spends languishing in an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, is an affront to justice, and we won't stop working until he is free," said Khalil's legal team.
May 29, 2025
Former Columbia University student protester Mahmoud Khalil remained in detention in Louisiana Thursday even after a ruling by a federal judge who found that his imprisonment by Trump immigration officials is "likely" unconstitutional—but his attorneys expressed hope that the decision brought Khalil a step closer to being reunited with his wife and newborn son.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has likely violated constitutional law in his attempt to use Section 1227 of the U.S. Code to remove Khalil from the United States.
Rubio first claimed that Khalil's involvement in student protests supporting Palestinian rights last year threatened U.S. foreign policy interests, and then alleged that Khalil committed fraud by not disclosing information about his past work with the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut and with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an agency that has long received U.S. funding to provide aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Calling the administration's pursuit of Khalil's deportation "unprecedented," Farbiarz wrote, "The issue now before the court has been this: Does the Constitution allow the Secretary of State to use Section 1227, as applied through the determination, to try to remove the petitioner from the United States? The court's answer: likely not."
"If Section 1227 can apply, here, to the petitioner, then other, similar statutes can also one day be made to apply," the judge added. "Not just in the removal context, as to foreign nationals. But also in the criminal context, as to everyone."
But Farbiarz called on Khalil's legal team to provide more information pertaining to the government's accusations against him regarding his immigration application, and declined to issue a preliminary injunction to release Khalil on bail—or to move him from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Jena, Louisiana to one in New Jersey where he would be closer to his wife and son.
The judge wrote that his finding "does not entitle [Khalil] to a preliminary injunction. He has not put before the court evidence as to the various other things he must prove... before an injunction might issue... The court will give the petitioner a chance to quickly fill out the record, and for the respondents to then weigh in."
Khalil is being represented by groups including the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU of New Jersey, and several legal firms. His legal team said that Farbiarz "held what we already knew: Secretary Rubio's weaponization of immigration law to punish Mahmoud and others like him is likely unconstitutional."
"We will work as quickly as possible to provide the court the additional information it requested supporting our effort to free Mahmoud or otherwise return him to his wife and newborn son," said the team. "Every day Mahmoud spends languishing in an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, is an affront to justice, and we won't stop working until he is free."
Khalil was informed by immigration agents who detained him outside his Columbia University-owned apartment in March that his green card had been revoked, before they took him in an unmarked vehicle to a detention center in New Jersey. He was then transferred 1,400 miles away to Jena where he's been separated from his legal counsel as well as his family
An immigration judge in Louisiana ruled last month that the administration can pursue Khalil's deportation. The case in New Jersey is challenging his detention on the grounds that his constitutional free speech and due process rights have been violated.
Several other international students who have been detained for supporting Palestinian rights—and opposing Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza—have been released from detention in recent weeks.
Elora Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School, said Farbiarz's ruling was "a victory in terms of the court recognizing that the targeting of Mahmoud Khalil based on his protected speech violates the due process protection he should be afforded under the Constitution."
"People around the world are watching to see what is happening in Mahmoud Khalil's case as one of the most prominent examples of the Trump administration taking actions against international students in the United States," Mukherjee told The Washington Post. "And I think the biggest takeaway that people will see is that he is still in detention in Louisiana, separated from his wife and his newborn baby and having missed his graduation. It is a symbol of the hostility of the executive branch to international students and lawful permanent residents right now."
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Judge Blocks Trump Ban on Foreign Students at Harvard
"Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard."
May 23, 2025
Update (12:10 pm ET):
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs handed down a temporary restraining order Friday, halting the Trump administration's ban on international students at Harvard University while litigation proceeds.
The judge agreed with Harvard's claim that the action would cause "immediate and irreparable injury" to the university.
Earlier:
Harvard University officials accused the Trump administration of using more than 7,000 international students and their families as "pawns in the government's escalating campaign of retaliation" in a lawsuit filed Friday, a day after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced the Ivy League school would no longer be permitted to enroll foreign students.
"With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard's student body, international students who contribute significantly to the university and its mission," reads the lawsuit. "Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard."
The university said it was seeking a temporary restraining order to the stop DHS from terminating Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which would force thousands of foreign students to transfer to other schools—or risk losing their legal status—and cancel the plans of many other students planning to travel to the U.S. in the coming months to begin attending in the fall.
Harvard said in the lawsuit that the move was a "blatant violation" of the First Amendment, the constitutional right to due process, and other laws.
DHS announced the termination of Harvard's certification weeks after the Trump administration threatened to revoke the school's tax-exempt status and froze more than $2 billion in federal funding after university president Alan Garber said the administration would not comply with President Donald Trump's demands to "derecognize pro-Palestine student groups, audit its academic programs for viewpoint diversity, and expel students involved in an altercation at a 2023 pro-Palestine protest on the Harvard Business School campus."
Harvard filed a lawsuit over the frozen funding last month, and arguments in the case are set to be heard in court in July.
The Trump administration's attacks have largely centered on what it claims is Harvard's failure to address "antisemitism" on campus, but a statement by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday additionally accused the school of "coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus." Noem provided no evidence of the claim.
Garber wrote to the university community on Friday, announcing the lawsuit and assuring foreign students that they are "vital members of our community."
"You are our classmates and friends, our colleagues and mentors, our partners in the work of this great institution," said Garber. "Thanks to you, we know more and understand more, and our country and our world are more enlightened and more resilient. We will support you as we do our utmost to ensure that Harvard remains open to the world."
He added that Trump's latest attack amounts to retaliation "for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government's illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body."
Garber noted in Friday's lawsuit and in the letter to students, faculty, and staff that Harvard has complied with the administration's demands, send on April 16, for information about each student visa holder at the university's 13 schools.
"On May 22, DHS deemed Harvard's response 'insufficient,' without explaining why or citing any regulation with which Harvard failed to comply," reads Friday's lawsuit.
The New York Timesinterviewed one Harvard student from Ukraine who said she would not be able to return home due to Russia's war on the Eastern European country. She said she was considering disrupting her education to go elsewhere in Europe to live with relatives.
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology swiftly extended an open invitation for international students at Harvard to transfer with an expedited admissions process in light of Trump's action.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council said he expected Harvard to "win a temporary restraining order before Monday" in the case.
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