Friday evening, after more than three months in custody, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student picked up by immigration police for daring to protest on behalf of people in Gaza, was released from a detention center in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil also dared to believe that America has laws and a deep abiding respect for free speech. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said he determined that Khalil, who was born in Syria and is a citizen of Algeria, is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community, NBC News reported. Farbiarz ordered the 30-year-old, whose wife gave birth to their first child during his detainment, released on bail.
We should celebrate his release and enjoy this moment of good news. Lord knows, there haven’t been many.
Two buses filled with mostly young people left the church I pastor for Jena to protest, confront and bear witness to the illegal arrest and detention of Khalil.
More than a month ago, on May 22, two charter buses filled with mostly young people left the church I pastor, First Grace United Methodist in New Orleans, for a four-hour drive to Jena. They went to a detention center to protest, confront and bear witness to the illegal arrest and detention of Khalil. The buses were organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement. First Grace was the host. May 22 wasn’t the first time a delegation left First Grace for Jena, and, given the facility’s role in holding people disappeared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it won’t be the last.
Though Khalil’s release on bail doesn’t end the government’s attempt to deport him, the effort to get him out of jail and to his wife and newborn son illustrates the power of the fourth branch of government, We the People.
Khalil has a green card. He is married to a U.S. citizen. He has no criminal record. He hasn’t been charged with any crime. And yet, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has labeled him a national security risk and sought to have him deported because he has said some things that the Trump administration doesn’t want him to say. Free speech, the first right to be amended to our U.S. Constitution, is no longer cherished given our current reality. The executive branch demands that we get in line or get arrested.
Men who wear no badges, men who often have their faces covered and men who present no warrants have been grabbing people on the streets. Khalil, who was returning home from an iftar meal during Ramadan on March 8, was arrested by agents who didn’t have a warrant. They later told a court they didn’t need one. This isn’t the way we’ve been taught that things roll in the United States. Our elders taught us that the governed and those who govern should have some faith in each other. As we watch ICE day after day behave brazenly and in such an authoritarian manner, deep down we may want to believe this is normal. It is not. We the people are starting to get it. Life has changed.
At First Grace UMC we operate a free legal clinic for immigrant children we call Project Ishmael. Our young clients often have legal standing and regularly report to the ICE office for periodic check-ins as their cases progress through the court system. Now, it isn’t uncommon for these children to be taken into custody on the spot and sent to detention centers. The ICE agents will say to our attorneys, “You can represent them from detention.” Some of these children and teenagers are one mail delivery away from a green card. It doesn’t matter.
As we experience the deep rot spreading in our nation, it’s important to remember two factors that have helped to hold us together as a nation. The first is the parchment we know as the U.S. Constitution and its own legal structure that allows us to transcend and better it. The second is the deep cultural, moral sense that arises from the Declaration of Independence and reminds us that we the people are about life, liberty and some degree of happiness for all even as we have failed forward with this common purpose. We embrace the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence despite all the times we’ve failed to live up to them.
It is becoming clearer by the day that the executive branch isn’t guided by law or by morality. It’s equally clear that Congress is cowardly. Thus, the people: the attorneys waging legal battles in courts and the people who’ve taken to the streets to protest en masse, are working to keep the character of the country intact.
Those who boarded those buses at First Grace UMC May 22 still believe in we the people and the character embedded in our hearts, minds and laws. And they believed it important to let a wrongly detained man know — even if they weren’t able to make contact with him — that he wasn’t alone.
No matter your particular stripe — “red” or “blue” or neither — we the people who comprise the fourth branch of government must continue to stand strong. I sense that most of us, regardless of political stripes, strongly agree on one thing: that the U.S. government isn’t working much on our behalf.
I don’t know what happened to Trump, Rubio or the other members of Trump’s Cabinet, but they need us — more than ever. They need us to confront them in the courts because they cannot stop themselves. They need us to confront them one Mahmoud Khalil at a time.
And the Mahmoud Khalils need to see the American public witness to our higher angels and our common beliefs in life, liberty and happiness. Such moral character may be lost on our executive branch. But it’s not lost on us. In fact, we rediscover its clarity — one bus ride at a time.
CORRECTION (June 24, 2025, 11:45 a.m. ET) A previous version of this article misstated the name of the group that organized buses for a trip to Jena, La. It is the Palestinian Youth Movement, not Palestinian Youth for Peace.