Federal judge in New Jersey orders Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil released on bail

Molly Crane-Newman and Cayla Bamberger, New York Daily News on Jun 20, 2025

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NEW YORK — A federal judge in New Jersey on Friday ordered Palestinian Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil released by 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, more than three months after the Trump administration detained him for protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Judge Michael Farbiarz granted Khalil’s request for bail after considering arguments from his legal team and lawyers for the Trump administration at a virtual hearing. Farbiarz found Khalil did not pose a danger to the community and said there was “no basis” to subject him to electronic monitoring.

A short while later, a New Jersey magistrate judge said the 30-year-old must be released once his attorneys have turned over his passport in Jena, Louisiana, where he has been jailed since his arrest at his Columbia-owned apartment on March 8. Farbiarz then issued an order saying the release must happen by 7:30 p.m. and the government must return his green card.

The judge denied a request from the government to stay the order should they appeal. In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin indicated the government would, in fact, appeal the ruling and accused Farbiarz of overstepping his authority. She said the judge in Khalil’s parallel immigration case, who has ordered him deported, was the only one with the authority to decide whether he should be released.

Khalil is fighting his detention in two venues: the New Jersey federal courts, and the immigration court in Louisiana, which is under the executive branch. Federal judges outrank administrative law judges.

Spokespeople from the Department of Homeland Security did not address Daily News’ queries about whether immigration authorities would comply with the New Jersey court orders.

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America. The Trump administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detain Khalil, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and damages property,” McLaughlin said.

Trump and his Cabinet members have repeatedly described Khalil as a terrorist sympathizer without providing evidence. The student activist, who was born in a Syrian refugee camp and holds Algerian citizenship, has refuted allegations that his criticism of Israeli military activity and advocacy for civilians in Gaza and the West Bank is based on bigotry. His lawyers have pointed to public comments condemning antisemitism that he made well before his arrest.

“No one should fear being jailed for speaking out in this country,” one of Khalil’s attorneys, Alina Das from the Immigrant Rights Clinic co-director at New York University School of Law, said in a statement. “We are overjoyed that Mr. Khalil will finally be reunited with his family while we continue to fight his case in court.”

The 30-year-old graduate student, a green card holder with no criminal record, played a prominent role as a negotiator in campus protests, but was not among the demonstrators arrested during the takeover of Columbia building Hamilton Hall. His wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, a U.S. citizen, accepted his diploma from Columbia on his behalf last month after giving birth to their first child.

“We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family,” Abdalla said in a statement. “But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family.”

Friday’s hearing came after Farbiarz last week found the Trump administration could not lawfully detain Khalil on the primary basis that it had cited, which argued his pro-Palestinian advocacy threatened U.S. foreign policy. The government then shifted gears and said it was detaining him for failing to fill out immigration forms correctly when he applied for permanent residency, an allegation that had been added to Khalil’s case after he was already being held.

Khalil’s lawyers then asked Farbiarz to revisit Khalil’s request for bail. They noted the judge had previously found that detention based on the kind of misrepresentations alleged by the government is rare. They had asked the court to release Farbiarz on bail or at least move him from Louisiana to New Jersey.

Khalil was the first in a series of noncitizen college activists who protested Israel’s war in Gaza to be detained by the Trump administration. Many of those students have recently been released on bail while their immigration cases continue.

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