Fri Jun 20 18:03:08 UTC 2025: Okay, here’s a news article summarizing and rewriting the provided text:

**Federal Judge Orders Release of Palestinian Activist Detained Over Columbia Protests**

**NEW JERSEY –** A federal judge in New Jersey has ordered the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who has been detained by immigration authorities since March due to his involvement in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. The ruling, issued Friday, marks a significant victory for Khalil’s legal team, although his fight against deportation in immigration court continues.

It remains unclear if Khalil, a legal permanent resident, will be freed immediately. His detention sparked national outrage after he was denied the opportunity to witness the birth of his first child in April. He was the first activist whose legal status was revoked by the Trump administration for student protest activities.

Khalil was not charged with a crime. Instead, Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used provision of immigration law, claiming Khalil’s actions could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the U.S., leading to his detention.

Advocates for Khalil argue that the crackdown violates the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. They also criticize the Trump administration’s tactics of deploying immigration authorities, sometimes masked and in plainclothes, to detain students instead of allowing them to remain free while challenging their deportation.

Khalil’s detention is not an isolated case. Several other students targeted for deportation by the Trump administration have been ordered released by federal courts, including Turkish scholar Rumeysa Ozturk, detained for co-authoring an op-ed calling for her university to divest from companies involved in Israeli abuses against Palestinians, and Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi.

Supporters of Khalil, who lives in New York with his U.S. citizen wife, also point to his detention in rural Louisiana as a deliberate attempt to isolate him from his family and legal representation and transfer him to a more conservative jurisdiction.

Read More