Mahmoud Khalil on his detention by ICE: ‘It is a stain on the U.S. consciousness’

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On the night of March 8, 2025, Mahmoud Khalil was walking into the lobby of his Columbia University apartment building with his wife, Noor Abdalla, who was eight months pregnant, when a man in plain clothes slipped in behind them. Before he knew what was happening, he was being detained by ICE.

Khalil feared for his pregnant wife’s safety. “The last thing I heard before being shoved into the unmarked car of ICE was them threatening Noor [with] arrest,” he recalls.

Khalil was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and fled the country at 18. He had a green card giving him legal status to live and work in the United States. Then a 29-year-old graduate student, he had become one of the most visible faces of the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, where he was a negotiator between the protesters and the administration.

Though Khalil had no criminal record and had never been charged with a crime, Secretary of State Marco Rubio nevertheless declared that he should be deported, invoking a provision that had rarely been used against a permanent resident in this way. After his arrest, Khalil was sent to an immigration detention center in rural Louisiana, more than a thousand miles from home.

“The charge is that the foreign policy of the United States found my presence in the country to have adverse consequences,” Khalil says. “A month later, when the government had to show the evidence, they only had … a short document saying that my activities in the United States, otherwise lawful, have created a hostile environment for Jewish students, and it goes against the United States’ efforts to combat anti-Semitism.”

Khalil spent 104 days in detention, during which time Abdalla gave birth to their first child, a son. In June 2025, a federal judge ordered him released. But the government is still trying to deport him, and Khalil is preparing to ask the Supreme Court to hear his case.

In September 2026, Khalil filed a lawsuit against Columbia, accusing the university of failing to protect him and other Palestinian students from harassment, and retaliating against them when they reported it. A spokesperson for Columbia told Fresh Air: “Creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university and our academic mission. … The University is committed to protecting our community from discrimination and harassment and responding promptly and appropriately when concerns are raised.”

Khalil’s new memoir, No Land to Stand On, draws in part from the diary he kept in ICE detention. Despite his experience, he remains a “firm believer” in the rule of law — and in the United States.

“When I came here only three years ago, it’s a place where I found that I may have a great life, … [where] I would have potential in my career, but also it’s a place where I want to raise my children,” he says. “This administration is trying to portray me as someone who is violent, someone who hates this country, someone who’s working to undermine the principles of this country. It is the total opposite, actually.”

Interview highlights 

On the conditions he experienced in ICE detention in Louisiana 

What is happening behind ICE detention gates is horrendous. And I believe that it is a stain on the U.S. consciousness. … It was crowded with hundreds of people who were told that their existence is illegal and no one of them could go free or could be set free. I shared an area with over 70 other men. The lights were always on, no privacy whatsoever. But there was something else, which is the despair in these men’s eyes. They were called names, they were called criminals, while, in fact, they were trying to do everything right. Most of them, at least the ones that were around me, were picked up from their ICE check-ins, from their court hearings or from their work sites. Once you enter these detention centers, you see a very different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and liberty and justice. But once you cross into these prisons, literally that door, you see the opposite side of what’s actually happening in this country.

Every story was horrendous and heartbreaking, and when I entered detention, I thought my case was the most horrific, but … in a day, I [realized] I’m lucky actually; at least I have lawyers supporting me, but the vast majority of them, they would be lucky to have even one lawyer defending them.

On the detention center’s location in rural Louisiana 

It was, like, an hour away from the closest airport, Alexandria. There isn’t any direct flight or many direct flights to or from big cities. So it was designed to make people feel isolated so that they can give up quickly. And that’s also another part of the bad conditions there. They want detainees to give up very quickly, because if they decide to fight, that would take time. If it’s comfortable, people would actually fight. But if it’s so bad, people will say, why would we fight our case?

On having to listen to his wife give birth over a payphone while in detention 

Every time I try to remember that moment I’m speechless, because I should have been free at home with my newborn son. But instead I was forced to listen to my wife, Noor, delivering over the phone. It was after midnight, like around two or three in the morning. … That’s why I’m really now fighting all this, because I can never forgive those who stripped that moment from me, a moment that I believe every couple looks forward to. … Noor and I went above and beyond to be together for that moment. I refused job offers abroad … just [so] that we can be together during that moment.

On his role as a negotiator with Columbia University during the pro-Palestine protests in the spring of 2024

During the encampment, the students … nominated me to be in this position for different reasons. One of them [was] my experience working in diplomacy. I spent five years working for the British Embassy in Beirut, for the Foreign Office, doing diplomacy. I came with very long experience working in such spaces, working in bureaucracy. … Columbia dealt with us as a PR threat or a brand issue, a public relations threat or an issue to deal with rather than actually [as] students who were grieving for what’s happening in Palestine, students were actually asking for change.

On if he witnessed anti-semitism in the movement at Columbia

I believe the Palestinian movement, or the movement for Palestinian Liberation at Columbia, was really rooted in dignity, safety and equality for everyone. And we are so proud to have built this movement with our Jewish peers, whether they are students, but also faculty. And to me, the movement itself, absolutely, there was no anti-semitism. There was no place for anti-semitism there. And that’s why I keep repeating again and again against the narrative that Columbia itself helped push, because we must take anti-semitism seriously, like all forms of bigotry. We have also to acknowledge when anti-semitism is being used or weaponized to protect Israel from criticism. …

Of course, there were some sporadic anti-semitic incidents that happened mostly from individuals outside of Columbia because they felt that Columbia was the hot-spot for activism. But the students were very conscious of that, and I remember we had a teach-in at Columbia … like, Anti-Semitism 101 … to help us understand the same way we had a lot [of teach-ins] about anti-Blackness. [We had] teach-ins about Palestinian and Black solidarity, Palestinian and Jewish solidarity. So these students were really trying to learn.

On why he keeps fighting and doesn’t self-deport 

If I leave and don’t fight, whatever this administration said about me would be the record. I wouldn’t be able to look my son Deen in the eye and tell him that I gave up on the fight at a time where I consider myself one of the privileged Palestinians who knows Deen will be fed tonight, that my family wouldn’t be bombed tonight by an Israeli missile, that I wouldn’t be stopped at a checkpoint going to my school. So I take that responsibility with so much care that I need to fight. I shouldn’t just shy away because my silence wouldn’t end anything. If I leave this country, I don’t think that would end much of the misery of the immigrants’ famil[ies] in this country, but also for the Palestinian people.

Anna Bauman and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper adapted it for the web.