Trump Admin Defies Judge On Releasing Activist

The New York Times reports:

A Trump administration official has told lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil that the government has no immediate plans to release him, in spite of a judge’s order barring his detention on the grounds for which he was originally arrested.

Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident, was prominent in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the school’s campus. He was arrested in March and transferred to Louisiana, where he has been held in a federal detention center for three months.

Shortly after his arrest, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, justified his detention by invoking a rarely cited law that he said allowed him to declare Mr. Khalil’s presence in the United States a threat to the country’s foreign policy goal of preventing antisemitism.

Read the full article.

UPDATE — Minutes before their deadline, the government responds, now says it does *NOT* plan to release Mahmoud Khalil, arguing the judge’s Wednesday order left room for them to keep him detained for reasons other than Rubio’s faulty “foreign policy” justification. https://t.co/Hx8nkbL5bP pic.twitter.com/qy4qnB6Euc

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) June 13, 2025