A New Jersey federal judge on Wednesday said the federal government’s detention of Mahmoud Khalil because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy at Columbia University is “likely” unconstitutional — delivering a major blow to the Trump administration’s crackdown on student protesters.
U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz did not rule on whether Khalil’s free speech rights were violated, but said his lawyers were expected to succeed in their claim an obscure provision of immigration law as applied to Khalil was so vague as to be illegal.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment.
Khalil, 30, was arrested on March 8 in his Columbia-owned apartment after the federal government moved to revoke his green card based on a rarely-used section of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that empowers the secretary of state to order someone deported if their presence is considered adverse to U.S. foreign policy interests.
“[This] case, at least for now, is not about choosing between competing accounts of what happened at Columbia between 2023 and 2025. Or about whether the Petitioner’s First Amendment rights are being violated,” Farbiarz wrote.
“Rather, the issue now before the Court has been this: does the Constitution allow the Secretary of State to use [the section] to try to remove the Petitioner from the United States? The Court’s answer: likely not.”
The Trump administration has framed support for Palestinians — which Khalil’s grandparents were — as antisemitic and sympathetic to Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Khalil, however, has denounced the harassment of Jews and denied furthering the activity of Hamas.
While an immigration judge in Louisiana has found Khalil deportable based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s determination, his lawyers separately brought the federal court case to ask Farbiaz to weigh in on the constitutional issues at play.
“Our law asks about an ‘ordinary person.’ Would he know that [the provision] could be used against him based on his speech inside the United States, however odious it might allegedly have been?” the judge wrote.
Again, Farbiarz answered no.
Khalil was the first known international student to be taken into ICE detention as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on college protests. In the weeks that followed, multiple federal judges have moved to release student activists on bail.
Khalil, however, remains in federal immigration custody in Louisiana, where he was forced to miss the birth of his first child and Columbia graduation. The court asked for more information in order to rule further on his request for bail and if not, his return to New Jersey.
“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,” his legal team wrote in a statement. “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.”
Farbiarz said Khalil’s lawyers, however, were not likely to succeed on their argument against a second claim by the Trump administration, which has to do with the paperwork he filled out while applying for permanent residency. In doing so, he denied a motion for a preliminary injunction on the matter.
The federal government has claimed Khalil omitted his prior work at United Nations Relief and Works Agency from the application.
Farbiarz said he would issue an order later Wednesday outlining next steps.
Originally Published: May 28, 2025 at 8:14 PM EDT
