Mahmoud Khalil Says He’ll ‘Continue to Protest’ Following ICE Detention Release
Pro-press conference Saturday, Khalil said he will continue to protest for Palestinian human rights.
The Columbia University activist missed the birth of his child and his graduation while he was incarcerated. President arrested him in March, arguing his presence in America creates “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, one of the groups representing Khalil, he was detained in part over “false allegations related to supposed omissions on his green card application.”
Khalil said at the press conference that he was protesting U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza, and to demand Columbia University divest from companies profiting off the war.
“This is why I was protesting,” he said Saturday. “This is why I would continue to protest with every one of you, [even] if they threatened me with detention, even if they would kill me, I’m still speaking for Palestine.”
Khalil said that even in the ICE detention center in Jena, Louisiana, he still felt free. “The fact that they put me in that place, that didn’t mean I was not free,” he said.
He said the men he was detained with were “incredible.” These are “men who the Trump administration are trying to portray as … criminals or just ‘illegals,’ as they say,” he added.
“As I said yesterday, whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone on this land, you’re not illegal,” he continued. “That doesn’t make you less of a human. And this is what the administration is trying to do, dehumanize me, dehumanize the immigrants.”
Rep. First Amendment rights. “Mahmoud Khalil was in prison for 104 days by … the Trump administration, with no grounds and for political reasons, because Mahmoud Khalil is an advocate for Palestinian human rights. He has been accused baselessly of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech.”
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She continued: “Being taken is wrong. It is illegal. It is a violation of his First Amendment rights, it is an affront to every American, and we will not allow, and we will continue to resist the politicization and the continued political persecution that ICE is engaged in. And so we welcome Mahmoud home.”
Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said Khalil’s treatment was “outrageous” and “unconstitutional.”
“This is a significant and important victory,” he said at the press conference, “although one that came far too late and much as we’re celebrating, I think we can’t fully let go of the outrage that Mahmoud had to fight for so long and so hard against this outrageous and unconstitutional government conduct by the administration to persecute him simply for advocacy for Palestine and dissenting from United States foreign policy. So I think Mahmoud and Palestinian advocates are still the tip of the authoritarian spear with this administration. But collectively, people want to keep up the resistance and keep up the fight for justice in Palestine.”
New Jersey District Judge Michael E. Farbiarz allowed Khalil to be released on bail. Farbiarz said there was “at least something” to the point that there is “an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil” for his speech on Palestine.
“And, of course, that would be unconstitutional,” he said.
Tricia McLaughlin, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, argued to The New York Times that the judge’s order was “yet another example of how out-of-control members of the judicial branch are undermining national security.”
“We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family and so many others the government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians,” said Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s wife, in a statement. “But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family, and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken for speaking out for Palestinian freedom.”
