It’s been two weeks since Mahmoud Khalil, a U.S. green card holder being held in an ICE detention center in Louisiana, missed the birth of his son. In March, Khalil, a Palestinian and recent graduate of Columbia University, was arrested and detained by ICE agents who didn’t have a warrant for his arrest, all in front of his then eight-month pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla. He’s since been held in the Louisiana ICE facility over 1,000 miles away, solely for his student organizing during his time at Columbia, which led the Trump administration to proclaim him a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
In an op-ed in the Guardian published on Sunday, Khalil wrote what he characterized as his “first words” to his son, and described how he was only able to support his wife during childbirth by speaking to her over a “crackling” phone. “During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept my voice low so that the 70 other men sleeping in this concrete room would not see my cloudy eyes or hear my voice catch,” he wrote. “I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience. Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?”
Still, Khalil wrote that “my absence is not unique,” because “like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life. Babies are born every day without their fathers—not because their fathers chose to leave, but because they are taken by war, by bombs, by prison cells and by the cold machinery of occupation. The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations.”
Khalil continued to shine light on the loss and dehumanization of all the fathers around him at the ICE facility. “I have come to recognize the look in the eyes of every father in this detention center. I sit here contemplating the immensity of your birth and wonder how many more firsts will be sacrificed to the whims of the US government,” he wrote, further raising the hypocrisy of how “the same politicians who preach ‘family values’ are the ones tearing families apart.”
“My love for you is deeper than anything I have ever known. Loving you is not separate from the struggle for liberation,” Khalil told his son. “It is liberation itself. I fight for you, and for every Palestinian child whose life deserves safety, tenderness and freedom. I hope one day you will stand tall knowing your father was not absent out of apathy, but out of conviction.”
Khalil has now spent over two months in ICE captivity. Shortly after the birth of their son, Abdalla said in a statement, “My son and I should not be navigating his first days on earth without Mahmoud. ICE and the Trump administration have stolen these precious moments from our family in an attempt to silence Mahmoud’s support for Palestinian freedom.”
Ja’Loni Amor, an attorney and reproductive justice advocate based in the South, wrote in an op-ed in March that Khalil’s case presents not just an immigration and free speech issue, but a reproductive justice issue, too. Amor called for reproductive rights and justice organizations in the U.S. to mobilize in support of Khalil and against family separation: “If reproductive justice organizations can’t fight the disappearing of a Palestinian father as his wife prepares to give birth, what is their commitment to reproductive freedom worth? What good is a movement that demands ‘freedom to parent’ but looks away when families of color are systematically denied the ability to raise their children in safety and dignity?”
Since Khalil’s detainment by ICE, the Trump administration has only escalated its attacks on international students and U.S. residents who so much as express support for Palestine or condemn Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza. Just last week, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar at Tufts University who was arrested and held in an ICE detainment center over an op-ed advocating for peace, was finally released—but only after a month in captivity, smeared as a national security threat by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In early April, Zeteo News reported that since Khalil’s arrest, the administration was in the process of trying to remove hundreds of international students without explanation, citing any amount of “criminal record,” including minor traffic violations and even experiencing domestic violence. Many of the students faced deportation threats specific to their peaceful advocacy against genocide and on behalf of Palestine.
“One day, you might ask why people are punished for standing up for Palestine, why truth and compassion feel dangerous to power,” Khalil wrote to his newborn. “These are hard questions, but I hope our story shows you this: the world needs more courage, not less. It needs people who choose justice over convenience.”
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