Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student arrested by U.S. immigration agents in March, was able to hold his month-old son this week after a federal judge intervened to thwart efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to keep the father and newborn separated by a plexiglass barrier.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States and Columbia University student, has become a symbol for the Trump administration’s crackdown on those who participated in pro-Palestinian, anti-war protests on college campuses.
Federal authorities have not accused Khalil of a crime, but the State Department revoked his green card under a little-used provision of US immigration law allowing the deportation of any non-citizen whose presence in the country is deemed adverse to US foreign policy interests —a claim that his lawyers, friends, family, and several people connected to Columbia have held is false.
Khalil, 30, a Palestinian who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Syria, entered the US on a student visa in 2022, according to Reuters, and became a lawful permanent resident in 2024 through his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, an American citizen.
The in-person visit with his wife and their son Deen is the first time he has met his child, as Khalil has been detained in a Louisiana facility since plainclothes officers took him from his apartment building as his pregnant wife recorded in early March. His request to attend his son’s birth on April 21 was denied by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On Wednesday, ICE stepped in to prevent an in-person visit between Khalil and his family.
“Granting Khalil this relief of family visitation would effectively grant him a privilege that no other detainee receives,” Justice Department officials wrote in a court filing on Wednesday. “Allowing Dr. Abdalla and a newborn to attend a legal meeting would turn a legal visitation into a family one.” They were going to permit a “no-contact” visit through plexiglass.
Khalil’s attorneys held that the government’s refusal to grant the visit was “further evidence of the retaliatory motive behind Mr. Khalil’s arrest and faraway detention” from the family’s residence in New York City. Late Wednesday, Michael Farbiarz, a federal judge in New Jersey, intervened to allow the family to meet sans plexiglass between them.
Abdalla had traveled nearly 1,500 miles to the remote detention center. “This is not just heartless,” Abdalla said of the government trying to stop her from having contact with her husband. “It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse. And I cannot ignore the echoes of this pain in the stories of Palestinian families, torn apart by Israeli military prisons and bombs, denied dignity, denied life.”
On Thursday, after the family gathered in person, Khalil’s lawyers argued his case for over 10 hours, calling on experts to convince the judge to grant him asylum, according to NPR. Khalil and his lawyers have said it is unsafe to send him to Syria, where he was born and raised in a camp for Palestinian refugees, or to Algeria, which gave him a passport because of his mother’s ancestry.
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Judge Jamee Comans, who last month sided with the Trump administration and ruled that Khalil could be deported under Secretary of State Marco Rubio‘s orders, is now considering whether the Palestinian activist will be granted asylum.
Khalil said during his testimony that Trump, Rubio, and other government officials “mislabeled me a terrorist, a terrorist sympathizer or a Hamas supporter, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I advocate for human rights. I never engaged in antisemitic activities.” Their attention on him, Khalil said, makes him a target.
“I became, not by choice, a celebrity—someone who has a target on his back by these mislabels. This means wherever I go in the world, I will have that target.”
Around two weeks ago, Khalil penned a letter to his son, published in The Guardian. “In the early hours of 21 April, I waited on the other end of a phone as your mother labored to bring you into this world. I listened to her pained breaths and tried to speak comforting words into her ear over the crackling line,” he wrote. “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. I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience.”
“Why,” Khalil continued, “do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?”
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Khalil, still in detention, was not able to attend Columbia’s graduation. His absence was noted, loudly, as a crescendo of boos and shouts of “Free Mahmoud” drowned out Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman. His wife accepted a diploma on Khalil’s behalf during an alternative graduation ceremony on May 18 held in New York City by the People’s University for Palestine.
“Every day since Deen was born, I understand more and more why the struggle matters,”Abdalla said. “I hope he grows up to be as brave as his father and as brave as every single student here who has risked so much—your education, your safety, even your futures—to speak up for Palestine.”
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