Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student who was arrested by ICE agents on March 8 outside his New York City apartment, spoke at the Palestine Museum US, near New Haven, CT on Nov. 22. This was his first trip outside of New York City since a judge lifted severe travel restrictions. He’s now free to travel the country to speak about his ordeal and his fight against the Trump administration’s targeting of people whose political views they oppose, especially pro-Palestinian activists. Khalil was held in an immigration jail in Louisiana for three months and three days before being granted bail. During his incarceration, he missed the birth of his son.
Khalil served as a negotiator and spokesperson during the Columbia student Gaza Solidarity Encampment in April 2024, which demanded that the university call for a ceasefire in the Gaza war and divest from companies linked to Israel that profited from the Gaza genocide.
The event featured a conversation between Khalil and Stanley Heller, chairman of the Connecticut-based Middle East Crisis Committee and sponsor of Khalil’s appearance. He began by describing his court cases, both as a plaintiff and a defendant.
MAHMOUD KHALIL: So I have so many legal cases, unfortunately. So the most recent one from yesterday’s is a lawsuit against the administration to reveal its, I would say, collusion and conspiring with pro-Israel groups like Canary Mission’s Maher Bitar worldwide and the other Columbia actors who worked with the government to smear Palestinian activists around the country, to smear Palestinian speech in this country. And we believe that the public deserves to know about these connections, how these connections happened, because all these groups were announcing that they were collaborating with the federal government to squash the Palestine movement in this country.
And here it’s part of the effort to expose Project Esther and a project that’s meant to use different obscure laws in the U.S. to come after Palestinian activism in this country and how they can conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. That’s, I think, the essence of Project Esther, how they can demonize Palestinian speech and fabricate stories about this speech. So this is one of the lawsuits that hopefully we interview to showing these connections between the administration and these shady groups.
STAN HELLER: So what about the cases against you? They grabbed you off the street and put you in an ICE jail in Louisiana, and then there was a victory in that you are released on bail. But then there was an immigration court decision and then … tell us about that.
MAHMOUD KHALIL: I mean, it’s so complicated, but I will try to give the simple version. There is a kangaroo court called an immigration court. It’s fully controlled by the executive branch. They’re not real judges, it’s not a real process. Literally, the attorney general controls that process. And I’m saying this because as an immigrant myself, but also I realize that the most of the public here, they don’t know anything about the immigration system in this country. How the executive branch can manipulate that system.
And when we hear that it is like court with an immigration judge that we think that it is a real, real process. But it’s not. So that process, because it’s fully controlled by the administration, they’ve decided that I’m deportable from the United States based on the (Secretary of State Marco) Rubio determination first.
But then when a federal judge said, this is unconstitutional, you cannot use this. Then they brought alleged—they call it fraud charges about my green card application, which was approved a year before and there isn’t any fraud whatsoever. So now we are also fighting that.
The real case is in New Jersey, a federal case, it’s called habeas, which is a First Amendment case. We’re saying that the Trump administration was motivated by political reasons to deport me, basically to chill speech across the country, which they partially succeeded unfortunately, in literally fear-mongering and punishing others so that whether students or not, whether citizens or immigrants or—anyone in this country would fear speaking for Palestine.
When we got the bail, the administration immediately appealed that decision to the appeal court. And the appeal court basically rejected their first argument, but now we’re waiting to hear a decision from the appeal court as well. And the other case, which is I’m also suing the administration for damages for $20 million for malicious persecution and for false imprisonment and for defamation for calling me all these names without any sort of evidence.
So that also is ongoing. And the main purpose of that is just to seek accountability because this administration, I mean, they figured they can do whatever they want. They can just throw pasta on the wall and see what sticks and what not because there’s no accountability whatsoever. So we have to make them feel that there is accountability for everything that they’re doing. It’s not just a court order and that’s it. They have to feel that there is consequences for their actions. And these lawsuits are just a small part of that effort. But the bigger effort is by actually the community, the people actually rising against this administration to make it pay for all the wrongdoing that they’ve been doing recently.
For more information, follow on Instagram @Justice4 Mahmoud.
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