Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil about ICE-HAB and his victory

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil about ICE-HAB and his victory

over 100 days imprisoned without charges and confronted with the impending deportation, the Palestinian student activist mahmoud "> Khalil convinced that he would ultimately get right. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour from CNN, Khalil, who is now again with his young family, describes the months that he spent in a detention center for immigration and customs control in the USA, as well as the pain of not being allowed to be at the birth of his son.

The dehumanization experience

"It was an extremely dehuman experience for someone who was not accused of anything," said Khalil, a Green card holder, against whom no formal crimes or civil law allegations were raised. His detention met with outrage in the USA.

lawsuit against the Trump administration

On Thursday, Khalil's lawyers died

his arrest outside of his apartment on the campus of Columbia University in New York City in March, when he returned home from a dinner with his wife, he felt like a "kidnapping", he explained Amanpour. Civil servants had persecuted him to the lobby of his building and threatened his wife with arrest if she did not separate from him. CNN previously reported that the ICE civil servants no search order presented at Khalils.

transported from one place to another

Khalil was one of the first in a series of top-class arrests of Pro-Palestinian students, while the government of President Donald Trump tried to fight anti-Semitism on college campus. He was first brought to New Jersey, then to Texas and finally to an ICE-HAFTZentrum in Louisiana-more than 1,000 miles away from his wife, a US citizen who was eight months pregnant at the time.

The detention conditions

"I was literally moved from one place to another, like one object", he remembered his Transport Detention centers. "I was tied up all the time," he said. Nevertheless, the time in the detention center never broke his spirit. "From the moment I was arrested, I knew that I would finally win."

nutrition and living conditions

The food in the ICE center in Louisiana was almost "inedible", he said. After serving meat, which brought him to vomit, he switched to vegetarian options. The facility was bitterly cold, but repeated inquiries about blankets were ignored. "The moment you enter such ICE facilities, your rights stay outside," he said to Amanpour.

allegations of the Trump administration

The Trump administration argued that Khalil's activities were a threat to their foreign policy goal of fighting anti-Semitism. His lawyers decidedly rejected this claim. After accusing him-without evidence-to be a Hamas sympathizer, the Trump administration Khalils deportation and explained that this was justified because he had not revealed any connections to two organizations in his application for a permanent US stay. His lawyers called this argument weakly.

commemoration of the first birthday

Khalil said to Amanpour that the Trump administration's allegations against him were "absurd". "You want to equate any speech for the rights of the Palestinians with the support of terrorism, which is completely wrong," he said. "It is a message that you want to make me an example, even if you are a legal resident ... that we will find a way to go against you to punish you when you speak against what we want."

a severe loss

In the middle of the inedible food, the cold and the fear of deportation, a moment was particularly difficult to endure - the immigration authorities refused to give him permission to be there at the birth of his first child. In May, the lawyers of Khalil said that the officials in the Louisiana Center brought up a "general contact prohibition policy" and not specified security concerns as part of their reasoning to reject the application. Khalil said: "To miss my child's birth date. I think that was the most difficult moment in my life ... We made so many applications to be able to be there at this moment."

a tearful moment

"I don't think I can forgive you that you took this moment. The first time that I saw my child was literally through thick glass. He was literally only five centimeters away from me ... I couldn't keep it. And when the moment came to keep him, it was by court order to be with him."