Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil on ICE detention and his victory

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil on ICE detention and his victory

The Palestinian student activist was detained without charge for over 100 days and faced the threat of deportation Mahmoud Khalil convinced that he would ultimately be right. In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Khalil, now back with his young family, describes the months he spent in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in the US and the pain of not being able to witness the birth of his son.

The dehumanization experience

“It was an extremely dehumanizing experience for someone who was not accused of anything,” said Khalil, a green card holder against whom no formal criminal or civil charges have been filed. His imprisonment was met with outrage in the United States.

Lawsuit against the Trump administration

On Thursday, Khalil's lawyers filed the complaint a lawsuit is seeking $20 million in damages against the Trump administration, claiming he was falsely imprisoned and portrayed as anti-Semitic while the government sought to deport him over his role in campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security called Khalil's accusation "absurd" in a statement.

Arrest and arrest

His arrest outside his apartment on the Columbia University campus in New York City in March as he returned home from dinner with his wife felt like a "kidnapping" to him, he told Amanpour. Plainclothes officers had followed him into the lobby of his building and threatened his wife with arrest if she did not separate from him. CNN previously reported that ICE officials no search warrant presented at Khalil's arrest.

Transported from one place to another

Khalil was one of the first in a series of high-profile arrests of pro-Palestinian students as President Donald Trump's administration sought to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses. He was taken first to New Jersey, then to Texas and finally to an ICE detention center in Louisiana - more than 1,000 miles away from his wife, a U.S. citizen who was eight months pregnant at the time.

The prison conditions

“I was literally being moved from one place to another, like an object,” he recalled of his Transport rejections to various prisons. “I was tied up the whole time,” he said. Still, his time in the detention center never broke his spirit. “From the moment I was arrested I knew I would eventually win.”

Nutrition and living conditions

The food at the ICE center in Louisiana was almost “inedible,” he explained. After being served meat that made him vomit, he switched to vegetarian options. The facility was bitterly cold, but repeated requests for blankets were ignored. “The moment you enter ICE facilities like this, your rights are literally left out,” he told Amanpour.

Trump administration allegations

The Trump administration argued that Khalil's activities posed a threat to its foreign policy goal of combating anti-Semitism. His lawyers have strongly rejected this claim. After accusing him - without evidence - of being a Hamas sympathizer, the Trump administration sought Khalil deportation and explained that this was justified, because he did not disclose ties to two organizations in his application for permanent U.S. residency. His lawyers called that argument weak.

Commemoration of the first birthday

Khalil told Amanpour that the Trump administration's allegations against him were "absurd." “They want to equate any speech for Palestinian rights with supporting terrorism, which is completely wrong,” he said. "It's a message that they want to make an example out of me, even if you are a legal resident... that if you speak against what we want, we will find a way to take action against you, to punish you."

A serious loss

Amid the inedible food, the cold and the fear of deportation, one moment was particularly difficult to bear - immigration authorities denied him permission to attend the birth of his first child. Khalil's lawyers said in May that officials at the Louisiana center cited a "general no-contact policy" and unspecified safety concerns as part of their reasoning for denying the request. Khalil said: "Missing my child's due date. I think that was the most difficult moment in my life... We made so many requests to be there for that moment."

A tearful moment

"I don't think I can forgive them for taking that moment away from me. The first time I saw my child was literally through thick glass. He was literally two inches away from me... I couldn't hold him. And when the moment came to hold him, it was by court order to be with him for an hour."