One day after former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was released from the immigration detention center where he had been held for three months, the anti-Israel activist appeared at a rally in New York City organized by a group accused of ties to the Iranian regime protesting the  U.S.’ weekend airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Mahmoud Khalil is a freedom fighter … who refuses to remain silent while watching a genocide in Palestine,” Khalil told a cheering crowd on Sunday, where he led anti-Israel chants including, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” at the People’s Forum protest, a demonstration organized by the National Iranian-American Council to protest the U.S. military strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.

Iranian dissidents and critics of NIAC, a U.S.-based Iranian-American advocacy group that calls for diplomacy with the Iranian regime and was critical of the Biden administration’s approach to Israel and the Middle East, accuse the group of being tied to the regime. 

Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent and living in the U.S. on a green card, led last year’s anti-Israel campus protests at Columbia against the war in Gaza and subsequent negotiations with university administrators. He was detained in March and released on Saturday after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence. 

Khalil’s release was met with support from some left-wing lawmakers.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who met Khalil at New Jersey’s Newark-Liberty International Airport a day after he was freed from a federal immigration facility in Louisiana, said that his detention by the Trump administration violated the First Amendment and was “an affront to every American.”

“He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,” Ocasio-Cortez added. 

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) wrote on X that he welcomed the decision to release Khalil. “As I have said before, his prolonged detention — without charges — is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights to free speech and raises serious constitutional concerns,” Nadler said. 

A federal judge in New Jersey issued an order on Wednesday ruling that the Trump administration’s monthslong effort to deport Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil was likely unconstitutional — but that his failure to disclose his affiliations with anti-Israel groups raises concerns. 

Judge Michael Farbiarz said in his opinion that the court found that Khalil is unlikely to succeed in his challenge against the claim that he failed to disclose crucial information in his green card application, including former employment by UNRWA and his membership in the campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which has been banned from Instagram for promoting anti-Israel violence.  

Farbiarz also noted that the charges in Khalil’s case are “unprecedented” and likely unconstitutional, stating, “the issue now before the Court has been this: does the Constitution allow the Secretary of State to use Section 1227, as applied through the determination, to try to remove the Petitioner from the United States? The Court’s answer: likely not.” Farbiarz said he will soon issue an order about next steps in the case.

The opinion ruling was a response to an appeal filed by Khalil’s lawyers last month, after the Trump administration presented claims against Khalil, a former graduate student who led last year’s anti-Israel campus protests against the war in Gaza and subsequent student negotiations with university administration.

A memo submitted to the court in Louisiana — where Khalil remains held in an ICE detention facility — signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited the president’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country could have adverse foreign policy consequences, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. It stated that Khalil’s arrest and planned deportation are based on his “participation in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.” 

“Condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective,” Rubio wrote in the two-page memo.

One day after the memo was submitted, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that the government’s argument that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was sufficient to rule he could be removed from the country. Khalil’s lawyers argue that he’s being punished for what they say is protected speech.

Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, first came to the U.S. on a student visa and later married a U.S. citizen and received a green card. He was arrested on March 8 at his university-owned apartment, without being charged with a crime, making him the first high-profile target of the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students.  

The prolonged case is a contrast to a Vermont judge’s decision last month ordering the immediate release of Mohsen Mahdawi, another Palestinian student from Columbia who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations, but remained jailed for just two weeks. Mahdawi graduated from Columbia last week. 

Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) are circulating a letter to administration officials defending detained Columbia University anti-Israel leader Mahmoud Khalil and questioning the authorities supporting his detention and revocation of his green card.

The letter had gathered over 100 signatures by Thursday evening, a source familiar with the situation said. It does not mention or acknowledge the specific nature of Khalil’s activities on Columbia’s campus, including his involvement with the anti-Israel encampment and the alleged distribution of pro-Hamas pamphlets at a protest he helped organize.

Khalil was also reportedly under investigation by Columbia itself for helping to organize an unauthorized protest where demonstrators supported Hamas and being involved in social media posts attacking Zionism and other acts of discrimination.

The letter focuses primarily on challenging the legal underpinnings of Khalil’s arrest, which the administration has said is based on an infrequently used law allowing the secretary of state to revoke the visa of any foreign national whose presence or activities pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

The letter repeatedly accuses the administration of violating Khalil’s free speech rights and attempting to silence him for dissenting.

“We write to express our grave concern over the constitutionally dubious use of an obsolete Cold War-era section of the Immigration and Nationality Act to have federal agents pick up a lawful permanent resident at his home, arrest him, and detain him simply for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech,” the letter reads.

It refers to the law in question as “a dusty old statutory section,” compares its use to the Alien and Sedition Acts and McCarthyism and says the administration has failed to outline the foreign policy effects of Khalil’s “exercising his free speech rights.”

“While this case is ostensibly about Mr. Khalil’s political speech about the war in Gaza, the case raises far broader concerns across the country about the silencing of political dissent,” the lawmakers continued, comparing it to the actions of authoritarian regimes. 

“While there may be disagreement with Mr. Khalil’s speech, it is his Constitutional right in our democracy to express his political views. That is why every American should be outraged by this brazen attempt to use the power of the United States government to silence and punish people who do not agree with the sitting president.”

The lawmakers also argued that the decision would inevitably be overturned in court, and requested information from the administration about past use of the statute in question and about the specific reasons, evidence and legal findings underlying the decision to detain Khalil and revoke his green card.

Another, more stridently worded letter, circulated by far-left lawmakers earlier in the week netted just 14 Democrats’ signatures.