"This vindicates what Mahmoud has maintained since day one — that the government cannot detain or deport him based on Rubio’s say-so," Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer for Khalil and a law professor at the City University of New York, said in a statement.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the federal government cannot deport or detain Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil for the foreign policy reasons cited by the Trump administration. The preliminary injunction — issued by U.