A Columbia College grad arrested and threatened with deportation for his function in campus protests in opposition to Israel gave his first public assertion Tuesday, saying that his detention is indicative of “anti-Palestinian racism” demonstrated by each the Trump and Biden administrations.
In a letter dictated from a Louisiana immigration lockup and launched by his lawyer, Mahmoud Khalil mentioned he’s being focused as half of a bigger effort to repress Palestinian voices.
“My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that each the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the previous 16 months because the U.S. has continued to provide Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented worldwide intervention,” he mentioned.
“For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.”
Khalil and the federal authorities have been sparring in court docket over the Trump administration’s transfer to ship him midway throughout the nation to the lockup in Louisiana.
The federal government says he couldn’t be detained at an immigration facility close to the place he was initially arrested partly due to a bedbug infestation, in order that they despatched him to Louisiana. Khalil says there was no such dialogue of bedbugs and he feared he was being instantly deported.
Khalil mentioned in a declaration filed in Manhattan federal court docket Monday that whereas he was held in a single day at a detention heart in Elizabeth, New Jersey, “I didn’t hear anybody point out bedbugs.”
In court docket papers over the weekend, legal professionals for the Justice Division additionally blamed his transfer on overcrowded services within the Northeast.
Khalil made the assertion about bedbugs in an exhibit connected to court docket papers by which his legal professionals requested that he be freed on bail whereas the courts determine whether or not his arrest violated the First Modification.
The legal professionals have additionally requested a choose to widen the impact of any order to cease the U.S. authorities from “arresting, detaining, and removing noncitizens who engage in constitutionally protected expressive activity in the United States in support of Palestinian rights or critical of Israel.”
Khalil mentioned in court docket information that he was put in a van when he was taken away from the Elizabeth facility and he requested if he was being returned to FBI headquarters in Manhattan, the place he was taken instantly after his arrest.
“I was told, ‘no, we are going to JFK Airport.’ I was afraid they were trying to deport me,” he recalled.
Of his time spent on the Elizabeth facility, he wrote: “I was in a waiting room with about ten other people. We slept on the ground. Even though it was cold inside the room, there were no beds, mattresses, or blankets.”
Khalil, within the letter launched by his lawyer on Tuesday, mentioned “I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention – imprisonment with out trial or cost – to strip Palestinians of their rights.”
“For Palestinians, imprisonment with out due course of is commonplace,” he mentioned.
Within the weekend court docket papers, legal professionals for the Justice Division gave an in depth description of Khalil’s March 8 arrest and his transport from Manhattan to Elizabeth after which to Kennedy Worldwide Airport in New York the subsequent day for his switch to Louisiana, the place he has been held since.
“Khalil could not be housed at Elizabeth Detention Facility long-term due to a bedbug issue, so he remained there until his flight to Louisiana,” the legal professionals wrote. They mentioned he was on the facility from 2:20 a.m. till 11:30 a.m. on March 9.
The legal professionals have requested that authorized points be addressed by federal judges in New Jersey or Louisiana quite than New York. A Manhattan federal choose has not but dominated on the request.
Khalil’s legal professionals, who oppose transferring the case, wrote in a submission Monday that the switch to Louisiana was “predetermined and carried out for improper motives” quite than due to a bedbug infestation.
Regardless of the bedbug declare, the Elizabeth Detention accepted no less than 4 people for detention from March 6 by way of final Thursday and Khalil himself noticed males being processed for detention whereas he was there, they wrote.
Khalil, within the letter launched by his lawyer on Tuesday, additionally referenced a wave of Israeli strikes throughout Gaza — ending the ceasefire on Monday evening — and known as it a “moral imperative” to proceed push for freedom for Palestinians.
“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,” he mentioned. “It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”
