Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil barred from attending birth of his son

Detained pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil missed the birth of his son on Monday after US authorities refused a temporary release, his wife said.

“I welcomed our son into the world earlier today without Mahmoud by my side. Despite our request for ICE to allow Mahmoud to attend the birth, they denied his temporary release to meet our son,” Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s wife, wrote on X.

“This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer," she added, referring to the US Immigrants and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

When the protests began at Columbia University, following the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel and the subsequent war on Gaza, Khalil functioned as an intermediary between students and university administrators over the student movement's demands for university divestment from weapons companies profiting from Israel's war on Gaza.

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Khalil did not participate in the encampments himself, opting instead to negotiate with administrators and offer guidance to the students.

ICE authorities detained Khalil on 8 March.

He has been held at an ICE prison facility in Jena, Louisiana, for the past month, where his lawyers believe the Trump administration finds judges more favourable to the US government. 

In April a US immigration judge ordered that Khalil could be deported even though he was a permanent US resident through his wife, an American citizen.

Khalil is one of several people affiliated with prestigious universities who ICE agents have detained as part of the government’s immigration crackdown.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked a law approved during the 1950s Red Scare that allows the United States to remove foreigners seen as adverse to US foreign policy.

The landmark ruling to deport Khalil could set the stage for the Trump administration to ramp up the deportation of other permanent residents. The administration has argued that Khalil’s presence in the US would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences”.

Marc Van der Hout, one of Khalil's lawyers, said in a statement issued after the ruling that Khalil had been “subject to a charade of due process”, adding his deportation order was “a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponisation of immigration law to suppress dissent”.

The court’s refusal to allow Khalil to attend the birth of his son was a double blow to his family.

Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American member of Georgia’s House of Representatives slammed the court’s decision.

“Mahmoud Khalil missed the birth of his first child because fascists cannot stand principled people demanding the end of the mass slaughter of Palestinians,” she wrote on X.

Tommy Vietor, a former Obama National Security Staffer and host of the talk show Pod Save America, said Khalil was in jail for “constitutionally protected speech, but the administration decided they also had to punish his wife and newborn baby”.

middleeasteye.net