CNN
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Detained for more than 100 days without charge, and with the threat of deportation looming over him, Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil was convinced he would eventually prevail.
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Khalil, who is now back with his young family, describes the months languishing in a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, and the pain of being denied permission to be present at his son’s birth.
“It was a very, very dehumanizing experience, for someone who was not accused of any crime, whatsoever,” said Khalil, a green card holder who had no formal criminal or civil charges brought against him.
His detention sparked outrage across the US.
On Thursday Khalil’s lawyers filed a claim against the Trump administration for $20 million in damages, alleging he was falsely imprisoned, prosecuted and portrayed as antisemitic as the government sought to deport him over his role in campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security in a statement called Khalil’s claim “absurd.”
His arrest outside his apartment on Columbia University’s campus in New York City in March, as he returned home from a dinner with his wife, felt like a “kidnap,” he told Amanpour.
Plainclothes agents had followed him into the lobby of his building, and threatened his wife with arrest if she didn’t separate from him, he said. CNN has previously reported that the ICE agents did not have a warrant during Khalil’s arrest.
Khalil was among the first in a series of high-profile arrests of pro-Palestinian students as US President Donald Trump’s administration moved to crack down on antisemitism on college campuses. The 30-year-old, who was born in a refugee camp in Syria before going on to graduate from Columbia, had played a prominent role negotiating on behalf of pro-Palestinian protesters at the university.
Once taken, he was moved first to New Jersey, then to Texas, and finally to an ICE detention center in Louisiana – more than 1,000 miles away from his wife, a US citizen, who was then eight months pregnant.
“I was literally moved from one place to another, like an object,” he recalled, referring to his transfers to different detention facilities. “I was shackled all the time,” he said.
But, he said, the days in the detention center never broke his spirit.
“From the moment that I was detained, I knew that I would eventually prevail,” he said.
“What I simply did is protesting a genocide.”
Israel has repeatedly pushed back against claims its war in Gaza is a genocide.
The food in the ICE center in Louisiana was nearly “inedible,” he said. After being served meat that made him vomit, he switched to vegetarian options, he said.
The center was bitterly cold, but repeated requests for blankets were ignored, he said.
“The moment you enter such ICE facilities, your rights literally stay outside,” he told Amanpour.
CNN has previously reached out to ICE for comment about the conditions at its Louisiana facilities – its policies indicate detention is non-punitive. The GEO Group, the corporation that runs the facility where Khalil was held, has denied allegations of abuse.
The Trump administration has argued that Khalil’s actions pose a threat to its foreign policy goal of combatting antisemitism. His lawyers have vehemently pushed back on that assertion.
After accusing him – without evidence – of being a Hamas sympathizer, the Trump administration, who sought Khalil’s deportation, said it was justified because he did not reveal connections to two organizations in his application to become a permanent US resident. His attorneys have said that argument is weak.
Khalil told Amanpour the Trump administration’s allegations against him were “absurd.”
“They want to conflate any speech for the rights of Palestinians with speech that’s supporting terrorism, which is totally wrong,” he said.
“It’s a message that they want to make an example out of me, even if you are a legal resident… that we will find a way to come after you, to punish you, if you speak, against what we want.”
Khalil told the Associated Press that if his claim against the Trump administration is successful, he plans to share any settlement money with others targeted in Trump’s “failed” effort to suppress pro-Palestinian speech. In lieu of a settlement, he would also accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.
Amid the inedible food, the cold, and fear he might be deported, one moment stood out as the hardest to bear – immigration officials denying him permission to be present at the birth of his firstborn child.
Attorneys for Khalil in May said officials at the Louisiana center cited a “blanket no-contact visitation policy” and unspecified security concerns as part of their reason to deny the request.
“Missing the birth of my child. I think that was the most difficult moment in my life… We put so many requests to be able, to attend that that moment,” Khalil said.
“I don’t think I would be able to forgive them, for taking that moment away from, from me.”
“The first time I saw my child was literally through thick glass. He was literally in front of me, like, five centimeters away from me… I couldn’t hold him.
“And when the moment came to hold him, it was by court order, to have one hour… with him.”
Claire Calzonetti and Nadia Lee contributed to this report.
