Mahmoud Khalil on exile, liberation, and ICE detention: ‘It was a clear act of cruelty’

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– Links within article body prose are styled consistently.In a small immigration courtroom in rural Louisiana on April 11, 2025, a quiet but significant moment unfolded—one that may mark the beginning of resistance against the growing authoritarianism of Donald Trump’s second term.

That afternoon, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, stood before a judge. Dressed in a blue prison uniform, he spoke calmly and directly to the court, far from the media spotlight and over a thousand miles from his family and friends in New York.

A month earlier, Khalil had been arrested in the lobby of his Manhattan apartment building as he returned home with his wife. Now detained in the town of Jena, he had just been told by the judge that he could be deported from the U.S. solely because of his political beliefs.

Khalil asked to speak. He paused for a moment, then began.For a moment, he paused, then sharply rebuked the judge who held his fate in her hands, turning her own words against her. He reminded her that she had promised him “due process” and “fundamental fairness.”

“Neither of those principles were present today, or at any point in this process,” he told her, effectively calling the proceedings a kangaroo court. “This is exactly why the Trump administration sent me to this court, a thousand miles away from my family. They are doing everything in their power—and beyond it—to punish and deport me.”

I was one of the few journalists in the courtroom that day. It was a time of heightened tension in the U.S., his arrest being the first in a series of high-profile detentions of students targeted by immigration authorities for their political views. In that climate of fear, when many were falling silent, I was struck by the quiet courage Khalil showed so naturally, even as formal opposition to Trump’s heavy-handed tactics had largely faded.

Four months later, out on bail and back in New York, I asked Khalil where that strength came from and whether he considered it an act of bravery.

“No,” he said softly. “I’ve always believed in standing up to injustice. I knew it was predetermined—a play, theater. I didn’t want to play by their rules.”

On a bright summer day in Brooklyn, Khalil invited me to his new apartment, which overlooked the borough’s low-rise buildings. The walls were freshly painted white—he had moved in just weeks earlier—and we sat on a gray sofa by the window. His four-month-old son, Deen, cried softly in the next room as his wife, Noor Abdalla, comforted him.

It was a classic scene of a young New York family: a baby rocker beside a large TV, white tulips in a ceramic vase, vibrant artwork on the walls. Khalil was warm and open, offering me chocolate and water before we began talking. But the grim reality of his situation soon surfaced as we called one of his attorneys, who listened in on our three-hour conversation as a precaution.

Though free from detention, the Trump administration’s case against him is still making its way through the courts. As a legal permanent resident, he acknowledges that deportation remains a real possibility.

“This administration is trying everything in its power—and beyond—to punish and deport me,” he said. “Until very recently, they were still trying to re-arrest me.”

He is preparing contingency plans for that scenario, though he didn’t share details. For now, he’s trying to regain some sense of normalcy. He spends his days with Deen, learning to be a father after missing the birth while detained. He recently rode the subway for the first time since his release but still finds himself looking over his shoulder. The move to Brooklyn was partly to distance himself from Columbia’s campus and the painful memories there. Still, it’s hard to focus.

A Palestinian refugee, no stranger to displacement, he remains steadfast even in the face of potential exile.

“Even if I am deported,” he said, “I will continue to speak out for Palestine.”

Khalil’s life changed forever when plainclothes agents came to his apartment in March. His arrest, captured on video by Abdalla, marked a turning point as Trump escalated mass deportations and cracked down on campuses with large protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Khalil stayed calm as he was taken into custody.Handcuffed and driven away, he left his heavily pregnant wife on the sidewalk, desperately calling their lawyer. I wonder if he has ever watched the video back. He shakes his head. “It is a moment I would never want to remember,” he says. “It was one of the most difficult, scariest moments in my life. I do not want to watch a moment where I was helpless to support Noor.”

His strongest memory of that night is the fear that Abdalla, a U.S. citizen, might also be arrested. He repeated her phone number in his head so he wouldn’t forget it. But he also remembers making casual small talk with the agents as they drove him away. They spoke about the iftar dinner, the meal to break the fast during Ramadan, that he had just eaten. “I did not fear them whatsoever,” he recalls. “I saw them eye to eye.”

Shortly after the arrest, he overheard an incoming call from the White House asking for an update. He was then given a document that accused him of no crime but claimed his presence in the U.S. harmed foreign policy interests. (A later memo signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated this was due to his participation in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities.”) He read it and laughed in disbelief. “Are they really going this far in coming after me?” he thought.

After 36 hours of guarded travel, he ended up in Jena, a sprawling detention center four hours from New Orleans, hidden in a pine forest along a country road. It is known as one of the harshest immigration jails in the U.S. Inside his large dormitory, the TV was blaring, and he saw Trump at a press conference on the White House lawn, looking at Teslas with Elon Musk. The president was asked about Khalil’s arrest. “We ought to get him the hell out of the country,” Trump replied.

It was then that he began to grasp the enormity of it all—a public narrative spinning out of his control, fueled by a vast right-wing disinformation network branding him an antisemite and terrorism supporter. “Who I am has been skewed so much,” he recalls thinking. “I was like: ‘Damn, my future is basically done… my reputation, my career aspirations.'”

Yet amid the horror, he felt certain his record would speak for itself. “That was my salvation,” he says. “I was 100% confident I had a very clean history. They would be able to get no dirt on me.” He spoke to Abdalla by phone; she was safe and told him about the outpouring of support from around the world. He sighed with relief.

That quiet courage, which Khalil has carried throughout this ordeal, was forged in childhood, through the many times he was forced to upend his life. He was born in Khan Eshieh, a small Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, the youngest of four brothers. His paternal grandparents were displaced from their farmland near Tiberias, in what is now Israel, during the Nakba of 1948. His father, a welder, left school at age 10. His mother, a low-level civil servant, ended her education at 16.

Growing up, his Palestinian identity was ever-present; most neighbors were displaced from the same region as his grandparents. His grandmother, who was illiterate, would tell stories of her life in Palestine, always with the hope of one day returning. “You could see the struggle in her face,” he says.

His parents, both largely apolitical, instilled in him the value of education, and he excelled, graduating with dreams of becoming a commercial pilot. But history had other plans. His final years of schooling in Syria coiHis activism began during the Arab Spring, a time of pro-democracy movements across the region. On May 15, 2011, he joined Nakba Day protests at Israel’s borders, where Israeli forces killed at least a dozen demonstrators and injured many more. Khalil, then 16, was shot in the leg and hospitalized. “That was my first direct experience of Israeli violence,” he recalls.

The incident drew him deeper into the turbulent politics of the time—initially hopeful, but soon marked by state brutality and civil war. He saw the Assad regime crack down on friends and family who sheltered those fleeing Damascus. Khalil began organizing small acts of resistance: street protests, graffiti, and anti-Assad posts online. “It was the least we could do,” he says. “When injustice surrounds you, silence is complicity.”

After high school, he was set to study aerospace engineering in Aleppo, but the city was engulfed in war. On January 11, 2013, just after his 18th birthday, two of his childhood friends and fellow organizers, Bashar and Ali, were seized by Syrian intelligence. Fearing he would be next, Khalil fled to Lebanon the next day. “I left everything behind,” he says. “My biggest fear was that they would reveal our names under torture.” Bashar and Ali were killed in custody; their deaths were confirmed only months ago, after the Assad regime fell in late 2024.

Khalil reflects on the different forms of authoritarianism he has faced. “When I was detained by U.S. immigration, what shocked me was how much it reminded me of Syria,” he says. “Plainclothes officers would take you without a warrant, just for your political speech.”

In August 2025, Khalil led a pro-Palestinian march in New York. He spent over 100 days in a detention center in Jena, which he hadn’t known was a legal black hole for deportations. He slept in a dorm with about 70 men, dictated updates to his legal team, and read books like Edward Said’s Out of Place and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Mostly, he shared stories with other detainees. Many were picked up during routine check-ins or at the border; some had been held for over a year. Most had no lawyer, as legal representation isn’t guaranteed.

One man from Georgia, detained for eight months with his wife, was held in a separate facility two hours away. They hadn’t spoken since their arrest, after fleeing Georgia’s pro-Russia government. The man, a carpenter, passed time making rosaries from commissary items like crayons, coffee grounds, and bread hardened into beads.Khalil heats something in the microwave and shows me a set of dishes, still impressed by their clever design. He tells me many of the men he knew have since been deported from the U.S.

For Khalil, the hardest moment came the night his son was born. His requests for leave to be there were denied, so he had to listen over the phone in the middle of the night, whispering words of encouragement while Abdalla was in labor. The call dropped around 2 a.m., and when he called back, he could hear his newborn son crying in the background. He whispered the call to prayer into the phone to welcome baby Deen into the world.

“It was a very difficult moment that I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” he says, his gaze drifting. “It felt like a deliberate act of cruelty, just to punish me.”

Abdalla comes out to say hello, holding Deen. Khalil’s face brightens. At four months old, his son has a full head of hair, deep dimples, and expressive brown eyes that follow his father around the room.

I ask Abdalla how it feels to have her husband back.

“Not having him for the first two months of Deen’s life was hard,” she says. “We missed a lot of milestones you can’t get back. So now we’re catching up on lost time.”

She describes their new apartment as their “safe space.” The couple has been warmly welcomed here, receiving spontaneous acts of kindness—an unexpected free lunch, smiles on the street. I’m the first journalist they’ve invited over.

Khalil met his wife, now a dentist, in Lebanon in 2016 while working for a nonprofit that helped educate Syrian refugees. She was there on an exchange program. After fleeing Syria, Khalil had worked his way up from nothing, taking construction jobs by day and volunteering for a refugee charity in the evenings, which provided him room and board. He eventually went to university to study computer science and took English classes. He let go of his dream to fly commercial jets and became more involved in government and bureaucratic work.

Khalil and Abdalla bonded over games of backgammon and stayed in touch after she returned home to Flint, Michigan. He was drawn to her kindness and gentle nature; she admired his intellect and ambition. She encouraged him to apply for a job at the British embassy, where he worked on Syria policy until moving to New York in 2023. Their long-distance relationship lasted seven years.

I ask how fatherhood has changed him since he returned home.

“It definitely makes me think more about risks,” he admits. “When someone depends on you, you want them to have as normal a life as possible. But it also pushes me toward advocacy. When I see Deen, I think of the children being killed because of Israel, who don’t have the luxury of being in New York. I think of immigrant children who don’t have the protection of an American passport.”

But Palestinian liberation is always on his mind.

“I want Deen to be able to visit his hometown, his ancestors’ town, and live as an equal with everyone,” he says.

The pro-Gaza protests at Columbia were the first time Khalil had taken on a public role. Though he had aimed for a behind-the-scenes job in government, he found himself at the center of campus turmoil in the spring of 2024, as students set up encampments, held rallies, and in late April, occupied Hamilton Hall, leading to a major police response.

Khalil served as a negotiator with the university administration, presenting student demands, including divestment from companies tied to Israel. He wasn’t on campus during the H—The occupation of Hamilton Hall involved lengthy but civil negotiations. A Columbia administrator, speaking anonymously to the New York Times, later described Khalil as “thoughtful, passionate, and principled, sometimes to the point of rigidity.” That seems fitting, but does he agree?

“Pretty much,” he says with a smile. “I’m not sure about ‘rigidity,’ though, because it wasn’t my position—it was the students’.”

Unlike many protesters, Khalil did not wear a mask, making him vulnerable to doxing by hardline pro-Israel groups. These groups have provided the Trump administration with lists of people they believe should be deported.

“I never wore a mask during protests because I knew the purpose of doxing was to intimidate and silence us,” he explains. But the campaign intensified after Trump’s election, shortly before Khalil’s arrest. He hadn’t anticipated how dangerous it could become.

Accusations of antisemitism have never been backed by solid evidence. Khalil points out that Jewish students played a key role in organizing the campus protests and argues that it is the policies of Israel and the Trump administration that fuel global antisemitism.

When asked how he envisions a free Palestine, he says, “I imagine it as a place where everyone lives with dignity, freedom, and equality, no matter who they are or where they come from. I don’t think there’s any alternative if we want lasting and just peace in the Middle East.

“Liberation doesn’t mean expelling anyone. It means freeing everyone, both the oppressed and the oppressors.”

Khalil remains critical of Columbia’s response to the protests and its later surrender to the Trump administration’s demands to suppress pro-Palestinian activism. Still, he feels genuine sadness about not being able to walk the stage to receive his master’s degree in May. He is the first in his family to graduate from university. His parents, who now live in Germany, had planned to attend. He had even bought his gown a year ahead of time.

“I know it would have been an incredibly important moment for my parents, who fought and sacrificed so much for me to get here,” he says. Instead, his diploma arrived as an emailed PDF file.

In late June, Khalil was released from jail on a hot, humid afternoon. He raised his fist in celebration and walked toward a small group of journalists. He had lost about 15 pounds. A federal judge in New Jersey had just ordered his release, ruling that the Trump administration’s foreign policy argument was likely unconstitutional.

That day, I asked him to respond in his own words to the “threat” label Trump had given him. “Trump and his administration chose the wrong person for this,” he told me.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he meant by “the wrong person.” But as our conversation ended, it became clear. The hardships Khalil has faced—from displacement to detention—in such a short life have only strengthened his sense of purpose. He refuses to be silenced or subdued. He sees his past and future as inseparable from the broader Palestinian struggle, from 1948 to the current violence in Gaza. “It is just a drop in the sea of Palestinian sorrow and grief, where families are being erased, children are being killed, homes are being raided, and dignity is being stripped away.””Done,” he says, pausing for a moment before we finish. He seems a little worn out.

“My story is just a small one,” he adds. “It’s about how violence against Palestinians can travel across the world.”

Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about Mahmoud Khalil his exile liberation and ICE detention written in a clear and natural tone

BeginnerLevel Questions

1 Who is Mahmoud Khalil
Mahmoud Khalil is an Egyptian human rights defender and researcher who was arrested tortured and ultimately forced into exile for his work documenting human rights abuses in Egypt

2 What does exile mean in his case
Exile means he was forced to leave his home country and cannot return If he goes back to Egypt he faces a high risk of imprisonment further torture or worse because of his activism

3 What is ICE detention
ICE detention is when the US government holds immigrants in jaillike facilities while it decides whether they can stay in the country or will be deported

4 Why was he in ICE detention
After escaping Egypt he sought safety in the US While his asylum case was being processed he was detained by ICE His supporters argue he should have been released as he posed no threat and was a victim of persecution

5 What did he mean by calling it a clear act of cruelty
He was describing the experience of being imprisoned by the US after already being imprisoned and tortured in Egypt It felt like a profound injustice and an unnecessary infliction of suffering by a country he hoped would protect him

Advanced Detailed Questions

6 How did he get out of ICE detention
He was eventually liberated or released from detention due to a combination of factors a successful legal challenge to his detention a growing public campaign advocating for his release and support from human rights organizations

7 What is the connection between exile and seeking asylum
Exile is the state of being forced out of ones country Seeking asylum is the legal process where someone who is in exile formally asks another country for protection because they fear persecution back home

8 What are the common challenges for someone like Mahmoud after being liberated from detention
Even after release individuals face a long and uncertain asylum process difficulty finding work the psychological trauma of their past torture and current detention and the constant fear of deportation

9 Can you give an example of why his case is significant
His case highlights a major

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