“Devastating”: Mahmoud Khalil describes missing the birth of his son in new legal filings

Detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil described what it was like to miss the birth of his son in new legal filings describing his detention and speaking out about the charges against him. 

The Columbia graduate has been held in a Louisiana detention facility for months, fighting the Trump administration’s attempts to deport him over his support of pro-Palestinian causes. In one of the many filings supporting Khalil’s request for an injunction that would grant his release, he said missing his son’s birth was one of the “most immediate and visceral harms” he’d suffered.

“Instead of holding my wife’s hand in the delivery room, I was crouched on a detention center floor, whispering through a crackling phone line as she labored alone,” Khalil wrote. “When I heard my son’s first cries, I buried my face in my arms so no one would see me weep.”

Khalil shared that his ongoing detention did him “dignitary and reputational harm” and put him through “personal and familial hardship.” He also worried that his arrest would do “severe damage” to his “professional future.” Still, the activist rarely sounded more pained than when he described being away from his wife and child.

“To not be able to see them, hold them, speak with them freely, enjoy everything I imagined our first days as a family would be like, is devastating,” he wrote.

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Khalil has a green card and is married to an American citizen. That did not stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from arresting him in March. Khalil was able to hold his infant son for the first time last month, meeting with his wife and child over the objections of the Trump administration. A federal court in New Jersey found late last month that Khalil would probably succeed in his case against the administration, saying the justification for his detention was “likely unconstitutional.”

Whether that court will grant an injunction and allow for Khalil’s release remains to be seen.