Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is released after spending over three months at a Louisiana detention center

Mahmoud Khalil – a Palestinian activist at the center of a long-running deportation fight – has been released from the Louisiana ICE detention center where he has spent more than three months after he was arrested outside his apartment on Columbia University’s campus, his attorneys said.

Wearing a keffiyeh – a scarf seen as a symbol of Palestinian identity and resistance – a grinning Khalil pumped his fists as he walked out of the detention center Friday evening with one of his attorneys. Since March, he had been detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the rural town of Jena, Louisiana.