The Trump administration said Friday it will continue to detain pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil despite a federal judge’s ruling that ordered the key figure behind what it considers antisemitic protests at Columbia University be released.
U.S. attorneys wrote a letter to New Jersey-based U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz, a Joe Biden appointee, indicating Khalil would continue to be held on an immigration fraud charge.
The administration was given until 9:30 a.m. EDT on Friday to file an appeal to Farbiarz’s ruling or else the preliminary injunction would take effect, leading to Kahlil’s release. No appeal was filed Friday, according to CNN, and attorneys for Kahlil demanded his release.
“The deadline has come and gone, and Mahmoud Khalil must be released immediately,” Khalil’s legal team said in a statement Friday morning, according to CNN. “Anything further is an attempt to prolong his unconstitutional, arbitrary, and cruel detention.”
Farbiarz extended the deadline to 1:30 p.m., and the government filed its response shortly afterward, The New York Times reported.
Khalil, a Syrian national and legal U.S. resident who is married to an American citizen, was a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia against Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip following Iranian-backed Hamas’ terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023. He was arrested by immigration agents in the lobby of his university residence in Manhattan on March 8 and has since been held in immigration detention in Louisiana.
The administration initially argued that Khalil’s detention was based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s judgment that he represents a threat to U.S. foreign policy. But now, Khalil’s detainment is based on grounds he entered the U.S. illegally because he failed to disclose his membership with certain organizations when he applied for legal residency in March 2024.
Court documents alleged that Khalil worked for the Syria office of the British Embassy in Beirut and was a member of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Some UNRWA staff members were found to have taken part in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
“An alien like Khalil may be detained during the pendency of removal proceedings regardless of the charge of removability,” the U.S. attorneys wrote. “Khalil may seek release through the appropriate administrative processes, first before an officer of the Department of Homeland Security, and secondly through a custody redetermination hearing before an immigration judge,” the attorneys wrote.
“These administrative processes are the proper avenues for Khalil to seek release — not having a federal district court hold that the government cannot detain Khalil on a charge that the Court never found to be unlawful.”
But Farbiarz addressed that argument in his order that Khalil be released, saying such an argument “does not work.”
“The reason: 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,” Farbiarz wrote. “And that strongly suggests that it is the Secretary of State’s determination that drives the Petitioner’s ongoing detention — not the other charge against him.”
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Wednesday in a statement to Axios that Khalil obtained his student visa “by fraud and misrepresentation.”
The law “authorizes the Secretary of State to revoke green cards of individuals who pose a threat to American foreign-policy interests,” she said, adding he harassed Jewish students and pointed to his role in the campus protests. “The district court order, entered without jurisdiction, will not be the final word.”
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