PALESTINIAN activist Mahmoud Khalil was welcomed home by cheering supporters, including left-wing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on Saturday, following his release from a federal immigration facility.

The former Columbia University postgraduate student, who has became a symbol of President Donald Trump’s suppression of campus protests, vowed to continue campaigning against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Mr Khalil greeted friends and spoke briefly to reporters on his arrival at Newark international airport in New Jersey.

“The US government is funding this genocide and Columbia University is investing in this genocide,” he said.

“This is why I will continue to protest with every one of you. Not only if they threaten me with detention. Even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.”

Joining Mr Khalil at the airport, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said that his three months in detention violated the first amendment of the US constitution and was “an affront to every American.”

She said: “He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall Establishment disagrees with his political speech.

“The Trump administration knows that they are waging a losing legal battle. They are violating the law and they know that they are violating the law.”

Mr Khalil, a 30-year-old legal resident whose wife gave birth during his 104 days of detention, vowed to also speak up for the immigrants he left behind in the detention centre.

“Whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone in this land, you’re not illegal. That doesn’t make you less of a human,” he said.

Mr Khalil was not accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia.

However, the Trump administration has said that non-citizens who participate in such demonstrations should be deported for expressing views that it claims are anti-semitic and “pro-Hamas,” referring to the Palestinian resistance group that attacked Israel on October 7 2023.

Mr Khalil was freed after US District Judge Michael Farbiarz said that it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal resident who was unlikely to flee and had not been accused of any violence.

The government filed notice on Friday evening that it was appealing against Mr Khalil’s release.