By Mark Morales and Dalia Faheid

(CNN) — A federal judge has ordered that Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil be granted release on bail Friday from a Louisiana ICE detention center – more than three months after he was arrested outside his apartment on Columbia University’s campus.

Judge Michael Farbiarz found Khalil – the only prominent pro-Palestinian demonstrator still in immigration custody in the US – is not a flight risk or a danger to public safety, saying it’s “highly unusual” to be seeking his detention at this point.

The judge also cited several “extraordinary circumstances” in Khalil’s case that led him to order his release, including “that there is a due process violative effort to punish” the Columbia University graduate who played a central role in negotiations on behalf of pro-Palestinian student protesters last year.

Khalil “is not a flight risk, and the evidence that has been presented to me at least is that he is not a danger to the community, period, full stop,” Farbiarz said.

Khalil, a lawful permanent resident married to a US citizen, has been at the center of a long-running deportation fight since his arrest in March. As his case has dragged on, several other student activists targeted for deportation by the Trump administration were released.

Khalil is elated with the judge’s decision, one of his attorneys Baher Azmy told CNN Friday, noting his release is expected “hopefully very soon.”

Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, said in a statement that she can “breathe a sigh of relief” knowing that Khalil will be reunited with his family after missing the birth of his first child during months of detention at a facility over 1,000 miles away.

Judge Farbiarz previously ruled the government can’t hold Khalil on the premise that his presence in the country is against the national interest, and on Friday found that Khalil doesn’t need to be detained based on a second allegation against him that he failed to give required information in his application to become a legal permanent resident of the US.

“It’s overwhelmingly unlikely, I found, that a lawful permanent resident would be detained on the remaining available charge” of failing to accurately fill out an immigration application, the judge said during Friday’s hearing.

At the hearing, Khalil’s attorneys argued that the court should allow him to be released on bail or transferred to a detention center closer to his wife and newborn son. They said the chilling effect of his detention has made it an “extraordinary case.”

“I’m aware, of my 20 years of representing immigrants, of no other case where the government announced the day that it detained someone that they were detaining them in order to send a message that their arrest would be the first of many, that they were going after student protesters,” Khalil’s attorney Alina Das argued before the court.

The federal government requested to temporarily halt Khalil’s release, which the judge denied Friday.

“This is a joyous day for Mahmoud, for his family, and for everyone’s First Amendment rights,” Noor Zafar, one of Khalil’s lawyers, said in a statement after his release.

“The court concluded there’s no reason he should continue to be detained given the serious harms that are happening, the chill that is happening to his speech and other people’s speech as a result of his detention,” Azmy told CNN.

As the case played out in immigration and federal courts, the administration has argued that Khalil should be deported because his presence in the United States threatens the administration’s foreign policy goal of combatting antisemitism. His lawyers contended that he was targeted for his pro-Palestinian views in violation of his constitutional rights.

“There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner. And of course, that would be unconstitutional,” Farbiarz said Friday.

As part of his release conditions, Khalil’s lawyers were required to surrender his passport to immigration authorities in Louisiana and he was prohibited from traveling internationally, limiting travel to a handful of states. The government was ordered to provide Khalil his green card and a copy of his passport, allowing him to board a plane home to New York Friday.

Khalil will however not have to report to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York, Magistrate Judge Michael Hammer ordered.

Khalil’s wife said the ruling doesn’t begin to address the injustices their family has been through but said she’s “celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family, and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken for speaking out for Palestinian freedom.”

‘Delay tactics’

The ruling comes exactly one week after Farbiarz ruled Khalil can remain in detention.

After the judge said the government could no longer hold Khalil on the premise that his presence in the country is against the national interest, attorneys for the Department of Justice said the judge’s decision did not prevent them from continuing to hold Khalil on a second claim – that he failed to give required information in his application to become a legal permanent resident of the US.

The judge ruled last week that the administration’s interpretation of his order is correct, keeping Khalil in detention.

Khalil’s attorneys at the time accused the administration of using “cruel, transparent delay tactics” to keep Khalil in custody.

Azmy on Friday said the charges still pending that Khalil made misrepresentations on his green card application are “baseless” and will be litigated.

When asked if Khalil will continue to protest when released, Azmy said: “He’s a peace activist, he’s an international human rights activist, and he’s Palestinian, and I don’t expect he will ever stop advocating for justice for Palestinian people and an end to their continued slaughter and starvation.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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