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June 12, 2025

Judge blocks deporting Mahmoud Khalil

Judge blocks Trump admin from deporting Mahmoud Khalil using Rubio power

However, the judge’s ruling did not foreclose the pro-Palestinian activist’s continued detention on alternative grounds.

By Erica Orden, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

A federal judge in New Jersey blocked the Trump administration from deporting pro-Palestinian Columbia University protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil on foreign policy grounds.

U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration’s effort to deport Khalil under a provision of federal law that allows the deportation of any foreign citizen whose “presence or activities” in the U.S. is determined to “have serious adverse foreign policy consequences” and is chilling Khalil’s First Amendment free speech rights.

In a 14-page order, Farbiarz said the rarely used statute Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked against the former Columbia graduate student is likely unconstitutional. He also ruled that the activist and legal U.S. resident who has been in immigration custody in Louisiana since March can’t be detained further on that basis.

The judge said it was unlikely the Trump administration could justify detaining Khalil via another rationale it tacked on after his arrest in Manhattan: that when he applied for a green card, he failed to disclose all his past employment and membership in certain organizations.

Immigrants are almost never detained for those sorts of omissions, the judge noted, finding it likelier that Rubio’s determination was the basis for Khalil’s ongoing detention.

However, the judge’s ruling did not foreclose Khalil’s continued detention on alternative grounds, emphasizing that he had only definitively rejected Rubio’s determination and that his decision had “no impact” on other aspects of the effort to deport Khalil.

Farbiarz, a Biden appointee, put his ruling on hold until Friday morning to allow the Trump administration to appeal.

A lawyer for Khalil, Baher Azmy, said in an email that he believes Farbiarz’s order means Khalil should be released from custody by Friday morning unless an appellate court intervenes.

“We are relieved that the Court determined that both his detention and his removal based on the ridiculous, overbroad Rubio determination would be unconstitutional,” Azmy said, “and that he is suffering severe ongoing harms [from] the government’s grotesque, vindictive retaliation for his constitutionally protected expression in support of Palestine.”

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin expressed disappointment in Fabriarz’s decision and said she expects it to be overturned by a higher court.

“Today’s ruling delays justice and seeks to undermine the President’s constitutionally vested powers,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, take over buildings and deface property, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”

While Khalil has remained detained, others who have been similarly swept up as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian academics have been released.

In early May, a Vermont federal judge ordered the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Tufts University Ph.D. student. A few days later, a federal judge in Virginia ordered the release of a Georgetown researcher, Badar Khan Suri. Like Khalil, both Ozturk and Suri had been detained in March.

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