Mahmoud Khalil Still Detained Despite Court Ruling Detention Unconstitutional

Palestine Legal Submits Evidence Mahmoud Khalil’s Arrest Has Chilled Pro-Palestinian Speech Nationwide

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who has been detained in a remote ICE facility in Jena, Louisiana, since March, was hoping to be released last Friday after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled there was no legitimate basis for his continued detention.

The judge ruled that Mahmoud Khalil’s months-long detention by the Trump administration on the grounds that Khalil’s campus activism in support of Palestinian rights posed a danger to “U.S. foreign policy” had chilled Khalil’s ability to express himself and was presumptively unconstitutional.

But in a letter to the judge Friday, the government justified not releasing Khalil based on false allegations that he committed fraud on his 2024 green card application by not disclosing his previous employment with organizations including a UN agency that helps Palestinians. Khalil’s legal team refuted those unfounded allegations with overwhelming evidence, which the government did not even attempt to respond to. On Monday, Khalil’s lawyers renewed his request for immediate release on bail, or, at a minimum, for him to be returned to New Jersey.

"The government's decision to continue to detain Mahmoud on these patently false and pretextual charges is only more evidence of their cowardly vindictiveness toward him and their unrelenting desire to punish him for speaking out against them and their complicity in genocide," one of Khalil's lawyers, Baher Azmy, said in a statement.

This decision follows a filing last week by Khalil’s legal team outlining the irreparable harm that he is suffering, as he remains illegally detained in Louisiana thousands of miles away from his family.

Included in that filing was a declaration from Palestine Legal, providing evidence of the shocking impact Khalil’s imprisonment has had even beyond those who know him. Data from intakes show that requests for legal support increased nearly 30 percent in the period following Khalil’s arrest. The declaration explains that a majority of those reaching out for help were students and faculty members, particularly non-citizens, who feared that they may be subject to the same fate for any past support for Palestine.

Examples provided in the declaration show clearly that the illegal arrests and detentions of non-citizen students like Mahmoud Khalil have sowed fear among their peers and chilled them from engaging in speech protected under the First Amendment. Students asked if they should cancel club meetings. Academic symposia were cancelled. Student journalists requested that by-lines on articles about the Middle East or campus protests be removed.

And this is the point for the Trump administration of taking such cruel and dramatic actions against a few students: They want to make others afraid and crush the movement for Palestinian liberation that has flourished on US campuses. But the student movement is resilient. Students have been organizing to defend themselves, their peers and their movements rapidly and successfully.

Mahmoud Khalil is represented by Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights, CLEAR, Van Der Hout LLP, Washington Square Legal Services, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the ACLU of New Jersey, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Read more and see updates on Khalil v. Trump here.