Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil returns home to New York area
Immigration authorities had arrested Khalil, 30, in March at the university housing complex where he lived in New York City. He was quickly transported thousands of miles away to a detention center in Louisiana, where he spent the last few months.
His unprecedented detention has sparked national outrage.
Further fueling the controversy, Khalil's American wife gave birth to the couple's first son in April while he remained behind bars.
Upon his release in Louisiana on Friday, Khalil addressed reporters briefly, saying he was excited to return to New York City and see his family.
'Although justice prevailed,' he said upon his release, 'it's long, very long overdue. And this shouldn't have taken three months.'
'Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this,' he added. 'That doesn't mean that there is a right person for this. There's no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide, for protesting their university, Columbia University.'
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin on Friday denounced the judicial order freeing Khalil and the judge who issued it.
'This is yet another example of how out of control members of the judicial branch are undermining national security,' McLaughlin said in a statement. 'Their conduct not only denies the result of the 2024 election, it also does great harm to our constitutional system by undermining public confidence in the courts.'
The Trump administration claimed it had the authority to detain and deport the pro-Palestinian student activist, arguing that his presence in the U.S. threatened national security. Another charge against Khalil alleges that he omitted details about his work history and membership in organizations on his permanent residency application.
The government cited an obscure provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives Secretary of State Marco Rubio authority to 'personally determine' whether a foreign national can remain in the U.S. on national security grounds.
An NBC News review of more than 100 pages of court filings found that prosecutors relied on unverified tabloid reports and anecdotal claims, raising doubts about the strength of their case for deporting Khalil.
Less than 10 minutes after Khalil, who has no criminal history, was released from the detention center in Jena, Louisiana, the Trump administration filed a notice of appeal.
Khalil helped lead student protests over the war in Gaza and negotiations with university officials at Columbia last year. The protests at the Ivy League school gripped national headlines for weeks and inspired similar demonstrations at universities around the world.
Some Jewish students at universities across the U.S. reported antisemitic incidents as the protest movement gained traction.
Khalil was the first of several foreign academics apprehended by immigration authorities in the first months of Trump's second term.
Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, a doctoral candidate from Turkey, was arrested outside her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, by immigration authorities on March 25. Viral street footage of her arrest showed Department of Homeland Security officials dressed in plain clothes surrounding Öztürk, grabbing her by the wrists and escorting her into an unmarked vehicle.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old graduate student at Columbia who was born in the West Bank, was apprehended by immigration authorities during his naturalization interview in Vermont.
Federal judges also ordered the release of both Öztürk and Mahdawi in recent weeks. Other notable cases include a Georgetown University professor who was detained by ICE and later released after a judicial order, and a Brown University professor who was deported to Lebanon.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
41 minutes ago
- The Independent
Columbia Sportswear sues Columbia University claiming merchandise is too similar and causes confusion
Columbia Sportswear is suing Columbia University, accusing the university of copyright infringement and breach of contract. The retailer claims the university's clothing and merchandise are too similar to its own offerings and that those similarities may confuse shoppers. The lawsuit was filed on July 23 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Columbia Sportswear has been using the name "Columbia" since 1938. The university and the retailer reportedly signed a deal in 2023 dictating the ways in which the university can use the word "Columbia" on its own apparel and merchandise. The pact stipulated that the university could use the name "Columbia" on merchandise so long as a school logo or mascot, the word "university", or an academic department of the founding year of the school — which dates back to 1754 — were present alongside the word. Columbia Sportswear claims in its lawsuit that the university breached those terms in 2024 when it allegedly began offering merchandise that used the name "Columbia" without any of the school signifiers established in the pact. The retailer also noted in the filing that the university was offering garments with bright blue colors that were "confusingly similar" to the blue used by Columbia Sportswear. 'The likelihood of deception, confusion, and mistake engendered by the university's misappropriation and misuse of the Columbia name is causing irreparable harm to the brand and goodwill symbolized by Columbia Sportswear's registered mark Columbia and the reputation for quality it embodies,' the lawsuit argues. Columbia Sportswear wants to stop all sales of the university's clothing that allegedly violate the 2023 agreement. It further wants a recall of all previously sold items and all the remaining stock to be donated to charity. The retailer is also seeking three times the amount of actual damages determined by a jury if its litigation is successful. $220 million to the Trump administration in order to restore its federal research money that the president cancelled earlier this year. Under the settlement, the college will pay $200 million to the federal government over the next three years.
Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
Detainees at 'Alligator Alcatraz' on hunger strike for 10 days
Detainees at a US immigration detention centre nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" have been on hunger strike for 10 days - protesting against what they say are inhumane and dangerous living conditions. One detainee in the centre in Florida, Pedro Hernandez, has been hospitalised but continues to refuse food. He pleaded for help in a recorded message from inside the facility, Sky News's US partner NBC News reported. He said: "We've all been hungry since Tuesday. I'm not going to eat another plate of food until they show us respect." His wife, Daimarys, told NBC News she is terrified for his health and fears he could die in custody, or be deported back to Cuba on his own. "My husband was in prison. We make mistakes, but we learn from them and fix things," she said. Mr Hernandez travelled to the US from Cuba in 2006. He was detained in July during a routine check-in with ICE in the city of Miramar. Hundreds of detainees are being kept at the facility, which has the capacity to hold 3,000 people. It was constructed in eight days, with experts suggesting the design is flawed and will compromise the safety of people being held there. Detainee Rafael Collado compared it to a "dog cage", adding: "The lights are on 24/7, so they don't even know if it's day or night." Critics have condemned the facility as cruel and inhumane, while Florida's governor Ron DeSantis and other Republicans have defended it as part of the state's aggressive push to support US President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
History will judge monsters who enabled a genocide
Keir Starmer's announcement that Britain will recognise the State of Palestine in September if Israel doesn't agree to a ceasefire and a two-state solution sums up his political project. Starmer himself is an empty vessel, a mere frontman for Labour's most reactionary and self-serving political faction: his own advisers briefed that he thinks he's driving a train, but they had placed him in front of London's driverless District Light Railway. This faction is defined by its cynicism, lacking not just a vision for our disunited kingdom, but a moral core. They saw that growing numbers of MPs were demanding Palestinian recognition, including some of the drones they parachuted into the parliamentary party, whose blind loyalty has been frayed by the realisation they're heading towards electoral apocalypse. READ MORE: Gaza detainees 'tortured and raped' by Israeli forces, United Nations hears The SNP were preparing to force a parliamentary vote on statehood, which would leave Labour exposed. And indeed other European states, like Spain, have already taken this step, with the likes of France making clear they will too. But all Starmer's aides care about is political game playing, rather than what happens to be the right thing to do. And here's the thing – they're not even good at it. They scrapped the universal Winter Fuel Payment because they thought it would win respect as a 'tough decision'. Alas, they project their lack of a heart on to the electorate, who shocked Labour goons by being averse to freezing their grans. They decided to wage war on disabled people with cuts which would drive hundreds of thousands into hardship, and were again shocked at being stopped in their tracks by the consequent revulsion, including from the malfunctioning androids who benefited from their rigged parliamentary selections. In this case, their ruse is as cackhanded as it is morally bankrupt. Any move which recognises the humanity of Palestinians is going to provoke the pro-Israel lobby, who long sank into a sewer of genocidal depravity, and so it proved. What about everyone else – that is, popular opinion, given the polling shows overwhelming public support for recognition of a Palestinian state, an arms embargo on Israel, as well as the arrest of its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity? Starmer's team are essentially arguing that if Israel tones down its genocide, then it will withdraw support for Palestinian statehood. The inalienable right of a people to be free is reduced to a crude bargaining chip, a chess piece on a board to be discarded for a greater strategic cause. So who is this supposed to please, exactly? Here's the gruesome truth. Obviously, Britain should have supported Palestinian national self-determination many moons ago. But there won't be any Palestine left to recognise at this rate. Here is the most symbolic gesture on offer, and even that is reduced to a cynical ploy. There is growing pressure on the Government, because they are facilitating what the former UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths, calls the 'worst crime of the 21st century'. Here is an attempt to deflect from action they could be taking, like ending all arms sales to Israel, including crucial components for F-35 jets that are exterminating Palestinians, or imposing sweeping sanctions on Israel. Indeed, earlier this year, Britain joined other Western states in imposing sanctions on two particularly extreme Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. They are both genocidal maniacs who belong in jail, sure, but it is easy to make them the bogeymen in order to absolve the wider guilt of the Israeli state. Notably, the sanctions were justified on the grounds of their incendiary comments, rather than their actions, because the latter implicates the British government. Nothing our government has done remotely meets the scale of the crime. A consensus of genocide scholars – including Israeli scholars – long ago concluded this is genocide. B'Tselem was one of two Israeli human rights organisations to reach the same conclusion this week, alongside Israeli author David Grossman, who won Israel's top literary prize in 2018. Gaza has been plunged into deliberate famine by an Israeli state which repeatedly broadcast to the world that it was intentionally starving the strip. More hungry Palestinians have been massacred at aid points alone since late May than the total number of Israeli civilians and soldiers killed on October 7. And even the BBC is now having to report that Palestinian children are being systematically shot in the head or chest – evidence which points in only one direction: that the Israeli army is deliberately shooting kids. The depravity is so extreme, documented and confessed to, that it is difficult to know either where to begin or end. The British government had a choice when confronted with an incontrovertible criminal reality: to make itself complicit in this historic abomination, or to abide by the most rudimentary building blocks of international law. It chose the former, and now it seeks to wash away its guilt by publicly agonising over Israel's crimes while making tokenistic gestures about a Palestinian nation it has literally helped to massacre. You would have to be either terminally gullible, or a dupe, to be beguiled by this. Throughout history, monsters didn't realise that that is what they are, but they were still monsters. The same applies to Westminster's rulers – and that will be the definitive conclusion of history and, we can hope, the courts, too.
