Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil says he was “targeted” for advocating for the Palestinian cause in a new letter from a detention facility, as a judge ruled his challenge to his arrest should proceed in New Jersey court.
“I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law,” Khalil said in the letter dictated over the phone to his family Monday.
The 30-year-old legal U.S. resident, who played a major role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last spring, was arrested by federal immigration agents in New York on March 8. He was briefly detained in New Jersey and transferred to a facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he remains. He is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent and is married to a U.S. citizen.
Khalil had filed a challenge to his detention in a Manhattan federal court. On Wednesday morning, a judge denied the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss his challenge — but allowed the case to move to New Jersey.
Judge Jesse M. Furman said that Khalil’s allegations are “serious” and “warrant careful review.” The judge noted that when Khalil’s lawyer filed the petition, he was detained in New Jersey, not New York.
The judge’s order barring the government from removing Khalil remains in effect and it will be up to the New Jersey federal court to consider Khalil’s claims — including a motion to transfer him from Louisiana to a New York detention facility; a motion for release on bail; and a motion for preliminary injunctive relief that Khalil’s legal camp filed Monday.
“In many ways, this is indeed an exceptional case, and there is a need for careful judicial review,” Furman said. “Such judicial review is especially critical when, as here, there are colorable claims that the Executive Branch has violated the law or exercised its otherwise lawful authority in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner.”
In the letter, Khalil described himself as a “political prisoner,” detailed the facility’s sordid conditions and decried Israel’s renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip.
“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.”
He also described his arrest at his Columbia University-owned residence, recalling how Department of Homeland Security agents refused to provide a warrant and “accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner.”
He said he was handcuffed and forced into an unmarked car.
“At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety,” he said in the letter about his wife, who is eight months pregnant. “I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side.”
Khalil said that after his arrest, he was transported to a facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he slept on the ground and was denied a blanket.
“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night,” he said. “With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”
DHS has previously said in a statement about Khalil’s arrest that he had “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt alleged Khalil organized protests that disrupted the campus, harassed Jewish American students and distributed pro-Hamas propaganda. A lawyer for Khalil, Samah Sisay, rejected the Trump administration’s claim, saying there is no evidence that Khalil provided support of any kind to a terrorist organization.
In the letter, Khalil also described his background, noting that he was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria after his family was displaced in the 1948 Nakba.
“I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland,” he said. “But 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. … For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.”
Khalil said he believes his arrest was indicative of “anti-Palestinian racism” demonstrated by “both the Biden and Trump administrations” over “the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention.”
“The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs,” Khalil warned.
He then urged people to rally together to defend the Palestinian people.
“In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all,” he said.
Khalil concluded his letter by saying, “I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.”
