My identify is Mahmoud Khalil and I’m a political prisoner. I’m writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana the place I wake to chilly mornings and spend lengthy days bearing witness to the quiet injustices below means in opposition to an incredible many individuals precluded from the protections of the regulation.
Who has the appropriate to have rights? It’s actually not the people crowded into the cells right here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been disadvantaged of his liberty for a 12 months, his authorized state of affairs in limbo and his household an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met who stepped foot on this nation at age 9, solely to be deported with out a lot as a listening to.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration services.
On March 8, I used to be taken by DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] brokers who refused to offer a warrant, and accosted my spouse and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night time has been made public. Earlier than I knew what was occurring, brokers handcuffed and compelled me into an unmarked automotive. At that second, my solely concern was for Noor’s security. I had no thought if she could be taken too, for the reason that brokers had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my facet. DHS wouldn’t inform me something for hours – I didn’t know the reason for my arrest or if I used to be dealing with rapid deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the chilly ground. Within the early morning hours, brokers transported me to a different facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the bottom and was refused a blanket regardless of my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my proper to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an finish to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full pressure Monday night time. With January’s ceasefire now damaged, dad and mom in Gaza are as soon as once more cradling too-small shrouds, and households are compelled to weigh hunger and displacement in opposition to bombs. It’s our ethical crucial to persist within the battle for his or her full freedom.
I used to be born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a household which has been displaced from their land for the reason that 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to but distant from my homeland. However being Palestinian is an expertise that transcends borders. 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. I consider our good friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated with out cost or trial by Israel as he returned residence from journey. I consider Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli army on December 27 and stays in an Israeli torture camp as we speak. For Palestinians, imprisonment with out due course of is commonplace.
I’ve at all times believed that my responsibility shouldn’t be solely to liberate myself from the oppressor, but in addition to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and worry. 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 US has continued to produce Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented worldwide intervention. For many years, anti-Palestinian racism has pushed efforts to increase US legal guidelines and practices which are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Individuals, and different communities. That’s exactly why I’m being focused.
Whereas I await authorized choices that maintain the futures of my spouse and little one within the steadiness, those that enabled my concentrating on stay comfortably at Columbia College. Presidents [Minouche] Shafik, [Katrina] Armstrong, and Dean [Keren] Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the US authorities to focus on me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian college students and permitting viral doxing campaigns – based mostly on racism and disinformation – to go unchecked.
Columbia focused me for my activism, creating a brand new authoritarian disciplinary workplace to bypass due course of and silence college students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal stress by disclosing scholar information to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s newest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at the least 22 Columbia college students – some stripped of their BA levels simply weeks earlier than commencement – and the expulsion of SWC [Student Workers of Columbia] President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If something, my detention is a testomony to the power of the coed motion in shifting public opinion towards Palestinian liberation. College students have lengthy been on the forefront of change – main the cost in opposition to the Vietnam struggle, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights motion, and driving the battle in opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Right this moment, too, even when the general public has but to completely grasp it, it’s college students who steer us towards reality and justice.
The Trump administration is concentrating on me as a part of a broader technique to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green-card carriers, and residents alike will all be focused for his or her political views. Within the weeks forward, college students, advocates, and elected officers should unite to defend the appropriate to protest for Palestine. At stake should not simply our voices, however the elementary civil liberties of all.
Understanding totally that this second transcends my particular person circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the beginning of my first-born little one.
