A Letter From A Louisiana Detention Center
Mahmoud Khalil Speaks From An ICE Cell
The letter below, is the written text, as dictated by Mahmoud to his attorney, over the phone from an ICE Detention Center. I thought it was critical to share this letter as widely as possible—to all those in my network—so that we might come together to sit in this singular moment. The moment is singular not because Mahmoud is exceptional—we know that imprisonment and deportation have long been routinized, violent, political tools of the state (see every moment for Black life in American history)—rather this moment is singular because the technologies of antiBlack, white supremacist violence in the United States is becoming freshly democratized. That is not to say that racialized violence is new; but rather that the bodies being read and readied for violence are increasingly diverse, almost automatically legible as violent in nature and marked as furtive, as I’ve noted in articles and speeches. The current leadership of the state apparatus—Judiciary, Executive and Legislative—have accelerated and assented to a process of processing people as problems, problems that must necessarily be punished, punishment that must be simultaneously meted out by the extraordinary violence of the state and quotidian violations of its deputized citizens.
We see this in the imprisonment of Mahmoud and the firing of professors for merely supporting the rule of law—once a conservative position—and the notion that all humans deserve human rights. We see this in the murder of the six year old Palestinian child, Wadee Alfayoumi, and the concurrent vicious stabbing of his mother, Hanan Shaheen, by their 73 year old landlord, Joseph Czuba—who they once had a good relationship, prior to October 7th—who apparently was swept into a paranoid rage, due to racist and xenophobic coverage on rightwing news. We see this in the compulsory presumption, that the 45,000+ Palestinians lives (and counting) are roughly proportional, at best, to 1300+ Israeli’s (and others) killed or kidnapped on October 7th. We see this in the flattening of the conversation, the literal capture and contortion of our logics—such as marking any critique of Israel as antisemetic or any support for Palestinian life as terroristic (what does it mean, or what does it say about the witness, that support for life instills or is experienced as an act of terror?) that disallows us from having a fulsome discussion on the truth of the matters asserted.
We see this in the inversion of the 14th amendment—most obviously in the targeting of already anemic DEI efforts—as a tool to preserve and secure the current racial hierarchy; while marking those who labor against racism (and the badges an incidents of slavery, aka, antiBlackness), as the very racists that abolitionists and the enslaved, warred against. Put differently the equal protection clause has been transmutated into an unequal protection mandate; whereby equality—nevermind equity—and political and economic inclusion are the enemy not the esteemed eventuality. These things are not new, rather they are renewed and revitalized technologies of antiBlackness that have been democratized to varying segments of our racial democratic republic, with a speed startling to those who’ve had the privilege of witnessing racism as spectacle, rather than a sobering factor determining life or death.
Below, are the words of Mahmoud:
“My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns—based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing — based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.”
