Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil has shared a letter on Tuesday from the immigration detention center where federal agents are currently holding him for protesting in favor of Palestinian rights ― calling himself “a political prisoner” of the United States government.
Dictating his words to family over the phone, Khalil spoke of the injustice he’s faced since agents with Homeland Security abducted him earlier this month without a warrant, despite his having a green card. He described sleeping on the floor without a blanket at immigration court in New York and at a facility in New Jersey, before agents quietly sent him to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana.
In his letter, Khalil did not just speak for himself, but also on behalf of his fellow detainees. The Syrian-born Palestinian said that he has bore witness “to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.”
“Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing,” he said. “Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.”
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Khalil’s detention is an example of the bipartisan anti-Palestinian racism in the U.S. government, he said, not just since October 2023, but for decades via efforts to oppress Muslims, Palestinians and Arab Americans. More specifically, he said his targeting is a test that serves as the Trump administration’s broader effort to quash political dissent regardless of citizenship status.
“I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear,” Khalil said, calling his detention a testament to the student protest movement “shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation.”
Khalil’s letter came less than a day after the Israeli military formally broke its January ceasefire agreement with Hamas, raining bombs across Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians with the White House’s approval. Israel is also still blocking all aid from entering the territory, worsening the starvation crisis and denying families adequate shelter.
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“Being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention ― imprisonment without trial or charge ― to strip Palestinians of their rights,” Khalil said, citing Israeli military captives like human rights activist Omar Khatib and hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.
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“For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace,” said the activist, who has not been charged with a crime.
On Monday, Khalil’s lawyers filed a preliminary injunction in New York asking for his immediate release so he can return home to his pregnant wife while the court reviews his petition arguing the illegality of his arrest. He has also separately sued to block Columbia from turning protesters’ student records to Congress, and in his letter condemned the university for allowing doxing campaigns founded on racism and disinformation to go on despite students’ pleas for support.
“In the weeks ahead, students, advocates and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine,” Khalil said. “At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.”
