Newark, New Jersey - A federal judge in New Jersey on Wednesday provided hope to Mahmoud Khalil and his supporters in an opinion ruling that the Palestinian rights activist's detention was likely unconstitutional.

Judge Michael Farbiarz of the US District Court for the District of New Jersey has requested more information in order to rule on Khalil's release from detention, but added that the recent Columbia University graduate student is "likely to succeed on the merits of this unconstitutional vagueness argument."

"The issue now before the Court has been this: does the Constitution allow the Secretary of State to use Section 1227, as applied through the determination, to try to remove the Petitioner from the United States? The Court’s answer: likely not," Farbiarz wrote in his opinion.

The judge was referring to a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act which the Trump administration has used to go after international students taking a stand for Palestinian human rights.

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Khalil has been locked up at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center since his March 8 arrest without a warrant in New York City.

A lawful permanent resident and a prominent member of Columbia's Palestine liberation movement, he was targeted by the Trump administration for deportation due to his activism.

Since his transfer to Louisiana, Khalil has been separated from his wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time of his arrest, and his newborn son, whose birth he missed while in detention.

"The district court held what we already knew: Secretary Rubio's weaponization of immigration law to punish Mahmoud and others like him is likely unconstitutional. We will work as quickly as possible to provide the court the additional information it requested supporting our effort to free Mahmoud or otherwise return him to his wife and newborn son," the recent graduate student's legal team said in a press release.

"Every day Mahmoud spends languishing in an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, is an affront to justice, and we won't stop working until he is free."