Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil walked out of a Louisiana immigrant detention center on Friday, hours after a judge ordered his release, a major victory for rights groups that challenged what they called the Trump administration's unlawful targeting of a pro-Palestinian activist.
"Although justice prevailed," he said upon his release in the rural town of Jena, "it's long, very long overdue. And this shouldn't have taken three months."
On March 8 Khalil, a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, was arrested by immigration agents in the lobby of his university residence in Manhattan. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has called the protests antisemitic and vowed to deport foreign students who took part. Khalil became the first target of this policy.
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