Columbia University activist, Mahmoud Khalil, says he was “attacked” for advocating the Palestinian cause in a new letter from the Louisian detention center, where he is detained after his arrest by federal immigration authorities earlier this month.
“I wake up with cold mornings and spend long days giving testimony of the quiet injustices ongoing against a large number of people prevented from the protections of the law,” Khalil said in the letter dictated by phone to his family on Monday.
The Legal Resident of the United States of 30 years, who played an important role in pro-palestinian protests at the University of Columbia La Primavera last, was arrested by federal immigration agents in New York on March 8. He was briefly arrested in New Jersey and transferred to an installation in Jena, Louisiana, where he continues. He is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent and is married to an American citizen.
In the letter, Khalil described himself as a “political prisoner,” said the sordid conditions of the installation and denounced Israel’s renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip.
“Who has the right to have rights? Certainly, they are not the humans who crowd from the cells here. It is not the Senegalese man who knew who has been deprived of his freedom for a year, his legal situation in the limbo and his family of an ocean of an ocean.” Justice escapes the contours of the immigration facilities of this nation. “
He also described his arrest in his residence at Columbia University, remembering how the agents of the National Security Department refused to provide a court order and “they approached my wife and me when we returned from dinner.”
He said he was handcuffed and forced to an unmarked car.
“At that time, my only concern was Noor’s security,” he said in the letter about his wife, who is eight months pregnant. “I had no idea if she would also be taken, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side.”
Khalil said that after his arrest, he was transported to an installation in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he slept on the floor and a blanket was denied.
“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to freedom of expression, since I addressed a free Palestine and the end of genocide in Gaza, who resumed full vigor the night,” he said. “With the top of January now broken, the parents in Gaza re -crave the cameras too small, and the families are forced to weigh hunger and displacement against the bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their total freedom.”
DHS has previously said in a statement about Khalil’s arrest that had “directed activities aligned with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” The White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, claimed that Khalil organized protests that interrupted the campus, harassed American Jewish students and distributed pro-breaks propaganda. A lawyer from Khalil, Samah Sisay, rejected the affirmation of the Trump administration, saying that there is no evidence that Khalil provides any kind to a terrorist organization.
In the letter, Khalil also described his background, noting that he was born in a field of Palestinian refugees in Syria after his family was displaced in the 1948 Nakba.
“I spent my youth in the proximity to still distant from my homeland,” he said. “But being Palestine is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities with the use of the administrative detention of Israel, prison without judgment or position, to strip the Palestinians of their rights … for the Palestinians, the imprisonment without due process is common.”
Khalil said he believes that his arrest was indicative of “antipalestine racism” demonstrated by “the Biden and Trump administrations” in the last 16 months, since the United States has continued to supply Israel weapons to kill the Palestinians and avoided international intervention. “
“The Trump administration is attacking me as part of a broader strategy to suppress the dissent. Visas holders, green card carriers and citizens will be aimed at their political beliefs,” Khalil warned.
He then urged people to meet to defend the Palestinian people.
“In the coming weeks, students, defenders and elected officials must join to defend the right to protest Palestine. At stake they are not only our voices, but the fundamental civil freedoms of all,” he said.
On Monday, Khalil’s legal team presented a preliminary judicial order in the Federal Court in the Southern District of New York asking that his liberation will return to his wife.
Khalil concluded his letter by saying: “I hope that, however, it will be free to witness the birth of my firstborn.”
