Columbia College scholar Mahmoud Khalil has shared a letter on Tuesday from the immigration detention heart the place federal brokers are presently holding him for protesting in favor of Palestinian rights ― calling himself “a political prisoner” of the US authorities.
Dictating his phrases to household over the cellphone, Khalil spoke of the injustice he’s confronted since brokers with Homeland Safety kidnapped him earlier this month and not using a warrant, regardless of his having a inexperienced card. He described sleeping on the ground and not using a blanket at immigration court docket in New York and at a facility in New Jersey, earlier than brokers quietly despatched him to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention heart in Louisiana.
In his letter, Khalil didn’t simply communicate for himself, but additionally on behalf of his fellow detainees. The Syrian-born Palestinian mentioned 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 mentioned. “Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.”
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Khalil’s detention is an instance of the bipartisan anti-Palestinian racism within the U.S. authorities, he mentioned, not simply since October 2023, however for many years by way of efforts to oppress Muslims, Palestinians and Arab Individuals. Extra particularly, he mentioned his concentrating on is a take a look at that serves because the Trump administration’s broader effort to quash political dissent no matter citizenship standing.
“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 mentioned, calling his detention a testomony to the scholar protest motion “shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation.”
Khalil’s letter got here lower than a day after the Israeli army formally broke its January ceasefire settlement with Hamas, raining bombs throughout Gaza that killed lots of of Palestinians with the White Home’s approval. Israel can also be nonetheless blocking all support from getting into the territory, worsening the hunger disaster and denying households ample 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 mentioned, citing Israeli army 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,” mentioned the activist, who has not been charged with a criminal offense.
On Monday, Khalil’s attorneys filed a preliminary injunction in New York asking for his instant launch so he can return residence to his pregnant spouse whereas the court docket opinions his petition arguing the illegality of his arrest. He has additionally individually sued to dam Columbia from turning protesters’ scholar information to Congress, and in his letter condemned the college for permitting doxing campaigns based on racism and disinformation to go on regardless of college students’ pleas for assist.
“In the weeks ahead, students, advocates and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine,” Khalil mentioned. “At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.”
