The first thing Noor told me on the phone was that the White House has tweeted about you. And I was like: What — What’s happening? What did Trump say about you that day? “Shalom, Mahmoud.” Across the 2024 election, Donald Trump and the people behind him said again and again that they were here to restore free speech to this country. I will immediately restore free speech Restore free speech. Reclaim the right to free speech. Free speech. Finally, protecting free speech Committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas. And then they got power. And they came after speech in a way the left never dared doing — never considered doing, never wanted to do. You saw it with the hunt to cancel any grant that had the word “diversity” anywhere near it. You saw it as countless organizations that depended on the government or that feared the government began reworking their mission statements or censoring their websites to avoid any words that might offend anyone in this administration. You saw it as border agents looked through travelers’ phones to see if they had said anything that the administration wouldn’t like. And you saw it as immigration agents began yanking people off the streets for the crime of nothing more than speech. Among the first of these was Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia, a leader in the school’s anti-Israel protests. This is a movement. An anti-war movement. Khalil is a green card holder. He’s married to a U.S. citizen. His sole offense had been to speak out against Israel in a way this administration did not like. He was detained under authority that the U.S. secretary of state has to cancel the residency of non-citizens who threaten U.S. foreign policy. Did this grad student at Columbia actually threaten U.S. foreign policy? Is that how fragile our foreign policy is? No one really believed that. Khalil was not followed into his building by plainclothes officers and taken to an ICE detention center in Louisiana for more than 100 days — imprisoned there while his wife gave birth — because the U.S. government feared him. He was imprisoned there because the U.S. government wanted others like him to fear them. They wanted non-citizens and immigrants to stop speaking out. It wanted everyone to ask: If they could do this to Khalil, could they do it to me? If they could detain him on such flimsy grounds, could they not come up with a reason to detain me? Khalil is out now on bail. He is still speaking. And so I wanted to hear what he had to say. As always, my email, ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com Mahmoud Khalil, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Ezra. So let’s start at the beginning. Just tell me a bit about yourself. Where were you born? I was born in a very small refugee camp, Palestinian refugee camp in Southern Damascus called Khan Eshieh camp. And it’s really like — I wouldn’t say like a poor neighborhood, but middle class, lower middle class. What did your parents do? So my parents — now they are in Europe. In Syria, both, they were civil servants. My mom was working in a civil office, issuing passports, IDs to people. My dad was a welder working in a state company Doing metal work? Yes. And what did they want for you? When you were growing up, what did they hope your adulthood would look like? So both my parents really wanted us to be educated and invested a lot in our education. Especially since my dad barely made it to middle school. My mom had only high school. And when you’re Palestinian in Syria, when you don’t have any property, there’s nothing in terms of family wealth. So education is our main investment. So my parents would rather us getting educated than actually getting food at a lot of points. What were you told about your family’s history in Palestine growing up? How was that identity formed for you? What I know about Palestine I heard from my grandmother, who spent 30 years in Palestine — in Tiberias. And actually my grandmother always like, would always tell me that they had Jewish neighbors. She would work in their farm. So we had that sense of that there was coexistence. And my grandparents were exiled from Palestine in 1948. And my grandmother, when she left Palestine, she was pregnant with my uncle, and she had to give birth en route to Southern Damascus. So we had that sense of injustice, that sense of Palestine was taken from us, was stolen from us. And the camp is just like about 30, 40 miles away from the borders, you can see the impact of Nakba, the Palestinian exile from Palestine around you because everyone is talking about it. And we grew up in that environment that we long to go back. That’s why they lived in tents, literally just a normal tent for a number of years before upgrading it to a mud house. And then they decided to build a concrete house because it was always living in the camps to Palestinians is always temporary. It’s a station until we go back to Palestine. You grew up in Syria and you had to flee during the uprising. Tell me about that. That moment. What leads to you deciding have to leave the Syrian people. Erupted against the autocracy in Syria. Around like against the Syrian regime. And I was part of that. Like Palestinians also were oppressed by the Syrian regime. And as a result of that, I was part of organizing protests, relief to displaced persons. But on January 11, 2013, two of my friends were disappeared, arbitrarily detained, and they had to flee the next day. And these two friends died under torture. How had you become involved in organizing in the Syrian protests. I mean, that’s a dangerous thing to do. You’re how old. I was 16 at that point. Palestinian refugees were, at the very beginning, isolated from the big protests. So a lot of displaced persons, Syrians would come to the camp, would come to our schools. So we opened our schools and we started a whole relief operation for them. So we felt that we need to speak up. We need to protect those who are fleeing from the areas that the regime is targeting. And yeah, with a very small group of friends, we started to organize small protests. And by a protest I mean it it would last for 5, 10 minutes because you fear that the mukhabarat or the military would come like after you. And the risk of protesting in Syria was your life. It was not like an arrest. It was not a revocation of your degree. It was literally death. And it was a week after my 18th birthday that I left to Lebanon. So when you realize you’re in danger, when two of your friends have been disappeared. And you’re in within a day, you’re in Lebanon. Did you already have an exit plan. Did you just get in a car and drive. How does that happen for you. Yeah, I learned about the disappearance of my friends. And at that point, I feared that they would under torture. They would confess my name or if they had on their computer or anything about me, I feared that I would be next. But also I feared that my name is already with the regime. So I literally like same day plan. I went to Lebanon. When you say you went to Lebanon in a car. In a car. Yeah like in a car in Syria. The security branches are very decentralized, so I wanted to make it as soon as possible to the border. So that my name is not on the list, that I cannot leave Syria. I had some relatives in Lebanon, so I spent a couple of weeks there, but eventually ended in Shatila refugee camp, which is one of the biggest Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. So in Lebanon, I wanted to continue my education, but I did not speak any English. Most of the universities in Lebanon are either in English or French, and they are very expensive, and they had no money whatsoever. So I started working in construction just to make a living. And then I saw the opportunity to volunteer in this organization. It’s a Syrian American organization called Jusoor, providing opportunities, education opportunities for Syrians around the world. And they volunteered there. And then they offered me like two weeks after they offered me a job. That was my first job, $600 a month. And a few months after they offered me a scholarship to go to University in Lebanon to study computer science. I worked with them five years. I was doing my undergraduate part time, working full time, and then I joined the British embassy, also as a program manager and political officer in their Syria office. And so you taught yourself English during this period. Yeah Because Joshua is a Syrian American organization. We had a lot of American volunteers. So I would just talk with them. I would communicate with them literally, not with words. It’s just like here. They’re very, very broken. Broken English. I don’t it took me, I would say, until 2017 that I felt like confident in my English. So it wasn’t like an easy process. What made you want to work with the British government Supporting Syrians. I worked in the Syria office. I wanted their policy regarding Syria aligns with my values, aligns with how I see the political solution in Syria. I wanted to have that insight and that contribution in that process. And it also aligns with my career aspirations in terms of working in diplomacy and international affairs as a whole. What made you want to come study in the United States. In Lebanon, I studied computer science. However, my career took a different path. It’s international affairs and development. So I wanted to have, this opportunity to actually study international affairs academically rather than just learning that by doing, to actually spend some time looking into theories, looking into the academic part of the work that I’ve been doing for the past 10 years at that point. Colombia in specific. In 2018, I got a scholarship to study an executive course at Columbia in nonprofit management and leadership. So at the business school. So I came here just for a couple of weeks. I liked Colombia and Colombia. In the Palestinian circles, it’s known because of Edward Said, the Palestinian-American academic and writer. So I heard also a lot about Columbia. And I was like: Yes, Columbia in New York, right next to the UN, where I eventually want to work. So why not. What’s your general impression of America. How do you think about America as an entity, as a country, as a. Yeah I mean, the fact that I worked for this Syrian American organization gave me a lot of insight of America being a country of opportunity, a country at least of democracy, of rule of law. However, I had my own reservation about the impact of America on me. Because as a Palestinian or as a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, America’s influence in the Middle East was very negative. So I felt the impact on me as a Palestinian. However, working for the British embassy, I would always meet American diplomats. So because the British and the Uc policy goals regarding Syria are quite similar. So I would spend a lot of time with American diplomats just discussing like Syria and all of that. And the most important thing I liked about the quality of education. So that actually encouraged me to come to the United States as well. What year is this. We’re talking. So I applied the first time I applied to Columbia was in 2020. I got accepted, but I couldn’t come because of COVID. So then I came in 2022 to the United States before October 7. How is that first year for you. What is Columbia like for you. I was very much looking forward to starting my degree at Columbia University. I wanted to take full load of courses. I wanted to have that two years as whether like, do I want to continue working in diplomacy or should I shift to the private sector. However, that was disturbed by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria when over 50,000 people were died because of the earthquake. But I continued, and I wanted also to be involved in as many communities as possible. First time living in the country, I wanted to have friends. So I joined the MENA group. I joined the Palestine working group. How is the Middle East, Middle East and North Africa club. I would say just to build community. Because in a city as big as New York, you need a community. It’s a hard place to get a foothold. Exactly and however it was very obvious. The anti-palestinian sentiment at Columbia, one of the first events we organized as part of the Palestine club or Palestine working group at Columbia, was inviting the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch to talk about Israel practices in the occupied Palestinian territories. And I was surprised that our event was flagged as a special event. And it was like, why’s that. Like we’re inviting someone from Human Rights Watch to come and talk. So I was very surprised that this event was flagged as special event. That’s even before October 7, I think was April or March 2023. Another event inviting the BDS coordinator to talk about the boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Boycott divestment. Sanctions movement to come and talk virtually. Also, it was flagged as a special event. And we had to fight with the administration to make it happen. So clearly, there was this anti-palestinian sentiment. And that was my first shock in at Columbia. And I mean, I’d just like to me felt like, O.K, it’s maybe bureaucratic. It’s not a big deal. But that was more obvious after October 7, the fact that Columbia is the anti-palestinian like prejudice within the Columbia administration. I’m saying like is very flagrant. It’s just like, tell me about that for a minute before we get to October 7 itself, because Columbia now has these dual reputations as what you’re describing that it had Board of Trustees that was I think it’s fair to say, very concerned about things like the boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. It’s also a home of a lot of very important Palestinian scholarship. Rashid Khalidi is there at this time. There’s this question of is it an anti-Semitic place. Is it a what. There’s some kind of tension here that is specific about Columbia. Columbia is a for profit place. Economy doesn’t care about Jewish students, doesn’t care about Palestinian students. They don’t. They only care about their brand and money. So it’s a corporation functionally. Absolutely October 7 happens. What do you think that day at. That day I was at the cinema with my wife Noor here in Lincoln Center. And when I left the cinema around like 12, 12:30 AM, I started to receive all these notifications. And to me, it felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle. And I remember I didn’t sleep for a number of days and nor was very worried about just my health. And it was heavy. Like, I still remember I was like this couldn’t happen. And what do you mean. We had to reach this moment. What moment is this. I was interning at UNRWA at that point — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — at the UN’s New York office. And as part of my internship, my research and work was focused on, Palestine, on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza. And you can see that the situation is not sustainable. You have an Israeli government that’s absolutely ignoring Palestinians. They are trying to make that deal with Saudi and just happy about their Abraham Accord without looking at Palestinians as if Palestinians are not part of the equation. And they circumvent to the Palestinian question and it’s clear, it’s becoming more and more violent. By October 6, over 200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers. Over 40 of them were children. So that’s what I mean by unfortunately, we couldn’t avoid such, such a moment. And it was absolutely difficult. To see not only the horrific images, but also the response of Israel because they knew what I knew. Like that’s what Netanyahu wants because Netanyahu thrives on the killing of Palestinians. At that point, there were already big demonstrations in Israel. The regarding the judicial reforms. But I knew that that’s something that Netanyahu would use to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Well, when you say these days where you’re not sleeping, are you just following the news and the social media kind of relentlessly, are you trying to think about what will happen next. Are you trying to think about how this will play out. What is. Yeah what’s the nature of your just thinking about the future, to be honest. Like worried about the future. And I remember one of the things I said, this is going to be even worse than the Nakba. The aftermath. And I had to think like, how can you stop this. What can we do. But also just following is it really a day or two days after when the Israeli or the former Israeli Defense minister said we’re going to cut everything from Gaza. Human animals, all of that. So the intent was clear that they want to obliterate Gaza. I remember I did a piece right after October 7, and one of the things that seemed clear to me, very, very quickly on that day, as you’re watching the images, as you’re hearing the screams, you’re seeing the videos of people of Jewish Israelis being paraded around of corpses is both that this attack is horrific and that the counterattack is going to be overwhelming. And that on some level, I understood that as something Hamas must have wanted. Pull Israel into this attack. Pull it into some kind of war. Maybe you involve other players in the Middle East, but a lot of lives were being used there as kind of chips on the table. Yeah was that your perception, or did you see this as something that needed to happen to break the equilibrium. Yeah I think it’s more the latter. Just to break the cycle. To break the Palestinians are not being hurt. And to me, it’s a desperate attempt to the world that Palestinians are here, that Palestinians are part of the equation. That was my interpretation of why Hamas did the October 7 attacks on Israel. Because at that point, there was no political process. It was clear that the Saudi Israel deal is very imminent. And Palestinians wouldn’t have any path to statehood and self-determination. So they had to do that. According to their calculations, which I mean, it’s obvious is not. What Not right. I’ve heard you in other interviews be very clear in condemning killing of civilians. October 7 was obviously an operation that did kill a lot of civilians. Do you see that as unavoidable. That Hamas had no other choice. Do you see it as a mistake. What I know is targeting civilians is wrong. That’s why we’ve been calling for an international independent investigation to hold perpetrators into accountability. And it’s very important for us who believe in international law that this should happen. And it’s very important to underscore as well that Palestinians have tried all forms of resistance, including non-violent resistance. However, this was always targeted by Israel. Palestinians who participated in the Great March of Return were killed or maimed because of that. And there’s nothing can justify the killing of civilians. And the international law is very clear about that. And we cannot pick and choose when international law applies to us or like it applies to others. But also there’s another point to this Isra. Palestinians don’t have to be perfect victims. And that’s what the world is asking of Palestinians amid the dispossession, the occupation, the killing, all of that. And horrible things happen. Nothing can justify that. And I would do everything in my power to stop that from happening. But we cannot go and ask Palestinians to be perfect victims. After 75 years of dispossession, of killing people in Gaza being under siege for over, at that point, 17, 17 years. Palestinians in the West Bank being stopped at checkpoints. Settlers, they attack them at every opportunity. The human dignity of Palestinians was absent and still unfortunately. So that’s why when discussing that, unfortunately, these horrible things are happening or happened. But we cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims. So tell me about from there to the organizing for you, how do you get involved. When do the protests and the encampments begin. What is your initial involvement in them. So after it goes back before October 7, my involvement in Palestine organizing on campus, and I started the process with the Columbia administration creating Dar, which is home in Arabic. It’s the Palestinian student society to bring Palestinians from different schools together. That was the goal of it. So I worked with the administration over the summer to build that society, and that positioned me by October 7 to be I was the co-president of this new society, but I was also a co-president of the Palestine working group at CIPA. So I had this relationship with the Columbia administration. Most of them like junior officers. I’ve heard you describe yourself previously to this. You’re a bureaucrat, and it sounds like you maintain some of that identity at Columbia. Yeah a person working within systems. Yeah, I mean, most of the students are young. They don’t have this, experience through these bureaucratic systems. So I found myself in that position where I would be the one communicating to the administration the concerns of the Palestinian community. So I. On October, October, I think 9 or 10. I sent Columbia an appeal from the Palestinian students regarding the one sided narrative that Columbia is trying to push regarding academic accommodations for Palestinian students like myself, who had been awake for days just watching the horrors. And when you say one sided narrative, Columbia was pushing what narrative and what form. What is the so the narrative that Columbia pushed from the very beginning was a very pro-Israel narrative. By October 8, there was hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel. Yeah Columbia erased that from their communication. And our ask was very simple. Treat us equally. See us as a humans. Yet that was met with opposition from or just No, no answers whatsoever. And the ask here would have been in these communications being more. Yeah being more balanced in terms of acknowledging the Palestinian death, acknowledging the humanitarian crisis, acknowledging that Palestinians are occupied. You either should be consistent with these matters or just don’t say anything. I guess the perspective of Jewish or Israeli students or Israeli Jewish students, I should say, at Columbia, would be that there was a huge attack that killed 1,200, some people murdered 1,200, some people that they were afraid of anti-Semitic violence erupting around the world. And they needed to hear something about that. Again, what we asked is not to omit their suffering or their perspective. We wanted to have equality as we want in the whole movement. This movement is about equality and justice. And Colombia did that without even the students asking for it. Like the first statement coming from Colombia, it was on the evening of October 7. And so the whole set of communications felt like an erasure of Palestinian experience. Yeah, absolutely. The whole Colombia communication with the student body was designed to erase the Palestinian experience. And so at this point, you’re sending emails. At what point does this become the protest that later become very well known. Yeah I must mention that the first protest that happened at Colombia was on October 12 5, six days after October 7. For the five days, for these five days, every single night there would be a vigil organized by Israeli and Jewish students at Columbia. The Palestinians took a decision to not hold any vigils during these days. Give them the space to mourn their death. And Yeah, give them the space to mourn. And when we wanted to have our protest on October 12, we had a counter protest. And Columbia made the mistake of putting these protests in front of each other. So the University decides where you can be. Exactly so they gave they gave the students supporting Palestine, the East lawn and students supporting Israel. The West Lawn. And it’s like a metaphor. Exactly and that was one of the biggest first mistakes that Columbia made. The protesters literally took a lawn. They wanted to call for their University to do three things. The first one to divest its investment from companies complicit in human rights violations to disclose their investments where Columbia money goes. And the third one to end ties with Israeli academic institutions. The student movement. At Columbia started like it’s not just after October 7, and this is something I really want to highlight. In 2002, Columbia students voted to ask Columbia or to demand Columbia to divest its investments from companies associated with or complicit in human rights violations in Israel. And every other year after that, the students would do the same. CUAD, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest, was not created after October 7. It was created in 2016, actually as a partnership between Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. So this is all not a new, not a new thing. And the student movement is not only about protests, encampments and civil disobedience. There’s a lot of work that have been done in terms of political education, referendums, submitting proposals to Columbia to divest on why they should divest research, mutual aid. So it feels very, very hard when you hear that it’s only about the protest and it’s only about the encampment. However, the student wanted to continue protesting because Columbia was not listening to them whatsoever. You described the groups you were in here as Palestinian groups. But as you mentioned a minute ago, Jewish Voices for Peace, which is also a student group, is involved in, I believe, from the beginning in these protests to and in the divestment movement. Tell me about them, about your relationship with the Jewish students who are part of these protests. What is that set of relationships and dynamics like. Having lived in the Middle East most of my life, unfortunately, the only Jew we hear about hear about is the one who’s trying to kill you. And that’s true for those in Gaza and in the West Bank, that’s the only Jewish person they encounter. The one at the checkpoints, the one reading their homes. And for me, because I was involved in this international like work, I met a lot of Jews through my work and coming into the United States, it was an opportunity for me to expand on that to really understand what Israel means to the Jewish population around the world and the Jewish perspective about Israel and Jewish Voices for Peace. And not only them, because there’s a lot of Jewish students who are not associated with Jewish Voices for Peace who were part of the movement, who felt that they can’t remain silent while a country is committing crimes in their names. Who wanted to fight anti-Semitism by showing what real Judaism is, that their Judaism requires them to speak out against these atrocities committed in their name. So they were absolutely like an integral part of the movement. And so you mentioned that the protests have these three goals or these three demands, I should say, which are divestment from countries that have human rights abuses or international law abuses, the cutting of ties to Israeli universities, and knowledge of where Columbia’s money is going, the more macro demand, the thing you hear in chants, the thing that I think is behind more of that is the idea of Palestinian liberation, of freedom. Absolutely What does that mean to you. Palestinian liberation means that Palestinians should live in dignity, freedom and justice. As simple as that. They did not have political goals in terms of one state or two state. Is it like, what’s the form of governance would be for a liberated Palestine. I mean, I have views on that, as a Palestinian. But it’s just about ending the injustices, ending the occupation and just to let people live. And that’s what the movement is rooted in. And one of the ways I remember the Columbia protest before I knew who you were, become a national story. And hearing about them constantly at every dinner I seem to go to. And then being defined by positions that feel more extreme than that. You famously a student saying this got attributed to you, but it wasn’t that Zionists don’t deserve to live. There can be a tension. Some people hear Palestinian liberation and hear Jewish eradication or expulsion. Is that what you mean when you say it. Is that what you hear in the movement when you say it. No absolutely not. And there is deliberate attempts to demonize the movement. And again, the movement as a whole is not homogeneous. But also there are some ignorance in the movement. In terms of what Palestinian liberation could mean, but in no way it means that it is the eradication of Jewish, of the Jewish people. And this is part of the demonization of the movement that if you get Palestinian rights, then you wouldn’t get Jewish rights. And to me, as a Palestinian, as an oppressed, I always felt my duty to also liberate my oppressor from their hate and from their fear. But these were all always like just a distraction. Such sentiment about the movement that it’s violent, that it doesn’t like it won’t eradicate Israel or the Jewish people because it’s not we are at a time where Palestinians are getting killed every minute. That’s what the focus was and still is. You end up as a negotiator on behalf of the coalition of groups that are protesting. What is that role. Who are you negotiating with. What are you negotiating for. So, given my relationship with the Columbia administration at that point and given my experience in diplomacy, the students and faculty approach me to negotiate on their behalf. So I was negotiating with two top administrators at Columbia. However, Columbia did not want to negotiate. They just wanted to buy time. And it was disheartening because these students were protesting since October, every single week. You have a protest. The students submitted proposals to Columbia’s committee on divestment, and the proposals were rejected. That’s how the encampment happened. When you have Columbia suspending like SJP and JVP in November for the protests and then disciplining students for protests, then the students had to step up their game because clearly the University wouldn’t listen to them unless they escalate. They did not take us seriously at the beginning, but then they took us more seriously. But it was clear that they did not want in any way criticize Israel. They did not in any way appear to be capitulating to the students. And it was very intense. I was threatened by the National Guard on the negotiation table. They told me, this is our offer. If you don’t sign, the police or National Guard will come today at 12:00 AM. So that was to uproot the encampments. Yeah, exactly. Many of the people protesting, many of the leaders of the protest would do so with their faces covered. You didn’t. Why I wasn’t doing anything wrong to cover my face. That doesn’t mean that others were doing something wrong. It means that my calculation is different of what risk is because the risk is real. So right after October 7, there were doxing or trucks displaying the faces of students. These are trucks going around Columbia University calling students Jewish hating group or Jewish hating students, something like that. So students feared about their identity. Also, there were groups like Canary Mission, Betar harassing these students and posting their information online, calling their parents, calling their employers. So there was this fear and these groups. I was a target. I’m still a target of these groups. But I to me like the risk is my risk appetite was higher than others. Like, why would I hide. I hide my face for protesting a genocide. If an employer doesn’t want to employ me for my views on Palestine, then I don’t want to work there. What was it. Your risk appetite. Or was it also a different risk assessment, which is to say that I mean, we’re going to talk about your arrest and detention in a second, but did that not seem to you like a thing that happens in America. Yeah I mean, I was ultimately wrong, wrong with that assessment. Because once again, I wasn’t doing anything wrong to hide my face. And these groups, their focus was mainly like employers opportunities and just like to smear you online. At no moment I felt that there actually would be government collaboration with these groups. None of my statements were problematic. Not to mention, even if they were problematic, they would be covered by First Amendment. But I did not feel that the government would actually act on such claims, baseless claims against me. And I mean, I was wrong, eventually that the government, the Uc government eventually depended on these profiles to target students. So Donald Trump is inaugurated for a second term in January of 2025, when he won the election and then when he was inaugurated. What did you think that meant. For one, this set of issues that you care about the conflict of American policy. But also, did you think it meant anything for you and other students in your movement personally. Did that seem like a likely outcome. Yeah the election of Trump when it comes to Palestine, unfortunately, it’s the same as Biden. Biden was equally bad. It’s just Biden was gaslighting us that they care about Palestinians. But in fact, Biden laid the groundwork for Trump to do what he’s doing right now. It’s just to us, it’s Trump would expose this hypocrisy. And so your view is that their policies were not that different. Just Trump was honest about it. Exactly but when it comes to actually using government resources to come after students to set the movement back because that’s one of Trump’s campaign like pledges, is to set the Palestine movement in this country 20 years back. I think that’s why he said in the summer of 2024. But my view is that this only exposed that there is a Palestine exception in this country, whether when it comes to First Amendment, whether when it comes to just the US government institutions. So moving forward to March, in the early days of March, you reached out to Columbia University. You say that something is changing, that you’re feeling unsafe. What were you seeing. So after the executive order in January targeting basically like student activists by the Trump administration, these shady groups like canary mission and Betar became more emboldened. They were more vicious in their attacks online. And the week, leading to my arrest, I noticed, I would all my friends would text me all these tweets from Canary mission, from all these groups like tagging Rubio, tagging DHS, ice, all of that. So I sent the administrator, the Columbia administration, a couple of emails asking for mainly what I was thinking about. I just want a lawyer to send this organization a ceasefire and desist letter. And so walk me through what happens on March 8. On March 8, I was coming back from an iftar dinner with my wife, and I entered the lobby of my building. And then I noticed that someone is following us. And then they asked me, are you Mahmoud khalil? I was like, yeah, who are you. Then they said, we are the police. I was like, what. Police? because they were in plain clothes. There were two at that point. Then they said like, we are like departments of Homeland Security. And your visa has been revoked. And I looked I was like, I don’t have a visa. Like, I’m not here on a visa. I’m a green card holder. So he looked very confused at that point. And he called unto like someone to come. So at some point, they were four people I asked for. Do you have any arrest warrant or anything like to show me. And they refused to do that. And they threatened, nor my wife of arrest if she doesn’t leave. So nor went to bring my green card because it wasn’t on me at that point. And they were just like, confused about the green card part, of this. And when like I brought it and they saw it. He looked even more confused. So he had to call someone and that someone told him bring him anyway. And they refused. During all that period, I was chill. I was very calm again I’ve dealt with power like all my life, so I knew I didn’t do anything wrong. I thought, given their first comment about the visa, maybe this is just a misunderstanding. I would go to the office and then it would be solved. But I was very scared because they were plain clothes. The cars were like unmarked cars. And they was taken to their office in New York. And hours after they showed me the determination that my presence in the United States presents, I think, adversarial. I can’t remember that. But like, it’s foreign policy threat to the United States. Here, I’ll read it. The provision here that they’re working off of the Trump administration is: “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the secretary of state has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” Exactly. And they show you that they. Yeah, they gave it to me five hours after. And they laughed when I saw it. I was like — Like what did they do. Even the officer shrugged like giving me the N.T.A., the notice to appear. But at the same time, I heard someone approaching the officer that the White House is requesting an update, and I requested endless times to call my lawyer. I told him I want to talk to my lawyer before signing or just like to know what’s happening. And they refused. And then they moved me like to New Jersey, then back to New York, to JFK, to Texas, to Louisiana in a matter of 30 hours. Wait, say that again. They moved you from JFK to Texas to Texas. Back to Louisiana. In 30 hours. In 30 hours. So everything was very quick without me knowing where I’m going. Like, I was shackled. And you’re expected to follow orders. And had you been given a lawyer, an opportunity to call someone Nothing at all. So these practices were present in Syria, where you have a security branch kidnapping you from the street or disappearing you, arbitrarily detaining you. So I never felt that this would happen to me in the United States, where they would show up without any arrest warrant, without anything and just take me. And that’s why I keep saying it felt like kidnapping. Because I had. From Saturday evening until Monday morning, I had no contact with anyone, no lawyers, no family, nothing. And the last thing I heard from them when they were taking me to the car, they were threatening naw with arrest. And she was eight months pregnant at that time. And that was the only thing I was thinking about during these 30 hours. Like, did they arrest. Nor is the baby O.K. Is she O.K. And I wanted answers. But they refused to give any answers. And I was again just shackled and and expected to just follow orders. And I only knew that I was going to Louisiana when we were boarding the plane. Tell me about what happens in Louisiana. So I didn’t know where I was going. Like, is it a jail. Is it an office. Is it a detention center for immigrants. I didn’t know any of that. So when we arrived there, we arrived at 1 o’clock in the morning 1:00 AM, and we get to the detention center. They put me in this dorm with over 70 men. I couldn’t talk to anyone. But then in the morning, I learned that this is like an ICE detention facility, that everyone here are undocumented or they are here because of their documents. I felt better because now Oh, I can’t talk to people like what’s happening. I can see there’s a phone. So the first thing when we woke up, I went like to ask someone, how can I operate the phone. And I called Noor and I just wanted like I called Noor just wanted is she going to pick up. Not what’s going to happen, what’s happening on the outside world. And Noor picked up and the first thing Noor told me on the phone was that the White House has tweeted about you. And it was like. Like what. What What’s happening. What did Trump say about you that day Shalom, hamoud. I remember that tweet. So I mean, he said later a lot of things about Hamas sympathizer Rubio said young aspiring terrorists, something like that. And yeah, and it felt like in a couple of days the media is painting a totally different image of who Mahmoud Khalil is. The dehumanization of such tweets and of such portrayal in the media was so difficult to me on a personal level. And yeah, but I kept asking like is what’s happening is legal. Like I fled Syria fearing political persecution to come to the United States to face the same fate of political persecution. Do you have a view on why. Of every protester? I will say, because I prepared for this show and I went looking for, O.K, I need to make sure I the really inflammatory things you’ve said. And I found inflammatory things said by people nearby you at different times, or by an Instagram account that’s part of a group. You’re a part of that kind of thing. I couldn’t find that much from you. Yeah, it’s not even I was part of the group. That’s like the reality. I was negotiating on behalf of all students that group was part of. At that particular moment. And, I mean, I joked with a couple of friends before my detention that I would be like Trump’s perfect target for if he wants to do anything regarding that. But still, it was a joke. Like, I didn’t think, why would you be a perfect target, a Palestinian. My name is Mahmoud and I made like I was vocal in the media. So that’s the perfect target to make an example out of because it’s not about me. It’s not about because he hates me or because but it was just the perfect recipe to make an example out of because the main goal of targeting me is to chill speech in this country. And yeah, to make an example out of me that even if you are a permanent resident, you’re not safe, that we have ways to come after you. And that’s the main message that they wanted to deliver by targeting me. And the other thing is because I present a different narrative than what the Israel lobby and this administration wants to show that Palestinians are violent Palestinians. They just want to just like bomb things. But like I presented a different reality to that no, we know what we’re doing. We want justice and freedom and dignity for everyone that we are educated that we are doing this from the strong belief in a human rights and in the dignity of all people. I want to go back to the Rubio termination notice. So the legal grounds here are someone, an alien in the language of the law here, who the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. So I’ve tried to look at what the Trump administration has said about the justification of this. And they’ve offered a few. One is the view that fighting anti-Semitism is a foreign policy priority of the United States, that you are anti-Semitic and that your presence here is then in conflict with that priority. How do you respond to that. I mean, it’s just baseless. Like, there isn’t any truth to that and it’s absurd. And in fact, what’s a threat to combating anti-Semitism in this country is this administration and conditional support to a country that’s committing a genocide in the name of the Jewish people, and they’re trying to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-zionism with anti-Israel policies or sentiment the same way they’re also trying to now couple or conflate between pro-palestine activism and pro-hamas like speech. And that’s their main goal. But a court a federal court judge said that it’s likely unconstitutional that the administration targeted me. And I’m not sure how much but this provision was used in the seconds to go after Jewish immigrants in this country. It has a very proud lineage. You touch this glancingly. But one of the arguments they’ve made about you is I think the word they used was aligned. Their activities are aligned with Hamas, and Hamas is a designated terrorist organization under US law. And so, again, that would make you potentially in conflict with American foreign policy. And this goes again into the attempt by whether this administration or just like Israel in general to group the pro-palestine activism with supporting Hamas. Which is not true. Like what I stand for, what I am advocating for is the end of the genocide, the end of the occupation, the end of the apartheid regime, and the end of complicity of Columbia University. In this regime. As simple as that. I don’t know how that make me aligned with Hamas or with anyone, but that’s what I stand for. The other thing, and this has become, I think more present and in the administration’s rhetoric, not just about you. JD Vance just gave a speech about citizenship where he makes this point about Zoran Mamdani. It’s kind of become a more, I would say, significant part of the rationale for a lot of what they’re doing, which is that being in America is a privilege. It’s not a right. And that the right response to that privilege, that gift you came here, fearing persecution in other places is gratitude, not protest that they believe it weakens America to allow the presence of immigrants who are critiquing what America is, what America’s foreign policy is. Maybe I think only maybe, but maybe citizens are allowed to do that. Maybe native born Americans are allowed to do that. But you hear on the largesse of the American government, you should be quiet and grateful and treat your presence here as a privilege. And they have decided to start deporting people who don’t. How do you think about that argument. This is a very dangerous argument. This is basically saying that, this is about selective than democracy. Selective rights to people. And this administration is trying to target anyone that who doesn’t fit the very narrow definition of what an American should be, or who is the real American in this country. If you don’t look like Stephen Miller, then you’re not an American. That’s eventually like what they want us to do. And the same with the privileged part of it. It’s a privilege of the law, not the privilege of the administration to be in this country and married to an American citizen who was born in this country. My son is American. So I get that privilege from the law. And this is how this administration, administration is trying to portray everything right now, that anything is a privilege. Federal funding is a privilege. Medicare is a privilege. Birthright citizenship is a privilege. Freedom of speech due process is a privilege. And this is very dangerous because you can’t have a democracy. For some it’s not a democracy. Then it’s just like I’m not sure with what a word to describe that, but it’s absolutely not a democracy. It would be just an autocracy. When you were in the ICE detention facility, you had become by this point a national cause with the right calling you all kinds of names. But many people also rallying around you. Attention to your case Shalom Mahmoud made sure a lot of people knew who you were. You were there with a lot of people whose names are not known. Tell me a bit about your fellow inmates. Tell me what you learned and saw about what’s happening in the immigration system and the detention centers during those 104 days. Coming to America to study and Taleo, to build a life here. I never imagined that there is such injustices happening on US soil. I mean, one example is a 45-year-old man who has been in this country for since 2000 21, and he was picked up from his court hearing, leaving behind his wife, who’s battling cancer, and four children under the age of 11. And this man was literally at his court hearing, going through the process of getting documentation. But now his wife had a chemotherapy appointment upcoming, and he was just like, literally crying every day. And it was so normal seeing people crying in the detention center. Another story is a person coming to me, showing me like a piece of paper. He’s like, what this paper is about since I had a master’s degree, and I know how bureaucracy works. So a lot of people would come to me with questions. And I was like don’t know what this is. He was like, no, they like they gave it to me. They made me sign it. And it’s his deportation order, and next day he was deported. And a 19 years old, came to ask me the can my mom continue to visit me. His mom would drive every week for four hours from New Orleans to see him, but she’s also undocumented. So he came to ask me, do you like, is it safe for her to come and visit me. And I had to tell him like, no, it’s not safe because they may arrest her and then you wouldn’t have anyone to support you on the outside. So just like so many stories like left and right, you see the injustice happening there, the dehumanization around being named criminals. On the news. While the vast majority of them where either picked up from court hearing from ICE check ins or from their work. Maybe it’s because of my ignorance, but I never thought that this is actually happening. Where the immigration system is very corrupt. It is, in fact kangaroo court. It is fully controlled by the executive branch, fully controlled by the attorney general. You in a letter you wrote or that you dictated there, you referenced this line from Hannah Arendt: Who has a right to have rights? Yeah that was, to me, the most difficult part of the whole experience, the moment you enter that facility. You don’t have any rights. All your rights are just like taken away from you and to me. Like having this support from lawyers who would tell me what my rights are. So that’s why I felt like in that specific moment when writing it about Yeah, who has rights to have rights if me being a legal, permanent resident in this country, an educated person in a matter of days, in a matter of like moments, I was stripped of all these rights. While you’re in there, your wife, who is eight months pregnant when you were picked up, gives birth. What was that experience like for you. I was always hoping that I would be out before the birth of my son. Norah And I have always dreamed about this moment. I mean, every parent have done the same. And to me, to lose that moment because a person decided so. Felt very difficult the dehumanization of that moment that I had to be on the phone listening to my wife at 2:30 in the morning listening just to hear screams and I can’t hold hold you her hands or give her any supporting like words in a place where. I can’t even raise my voice at that time. You’re listening in this room with. Yeah, I was on the phone. Yeah like, there was 70 people. They were asleep. Like the majority of them. But it was also trying to resist crying at that moment. I didn’t want to. I don’t want them to see me crying. And this is one of the moments that I would never forgive them for taking it from me. But this is part of the cruelty. That was imposed on me, that we went to ice to DHS to request temporary or Furlough temporary release, but was refused immediately. And we gave them. You can put all the conditions like you want, just like for two hours, just to be for me to be in that room. I’m not like I have no criminal history. No risks whatsoever. Yet they refuse because their main goal out of this, is to punish me, to make an example out of me to be as cruel as possible. And again against me. So Yeah. So I always struggle to answer this question about that feeling. Because I try to prepare for that moment. Yeah I collapsed like when I was on the phone. And I had to wait a number of hours until I could receive a picture of Deen — of the newborn. But then the detainees actually made me a cake the night of like I did not tell anyone, but then someone approached me. He’s like, you’re not O.K because I stayed on my bunk like the whole day. Then he told me you’re not O.K. I told him like, yeah, my wife gave birth today, and then an hour after, it’s a detention made like cake. It’s not like a real cake, but it’s. Yeah that filled to have them. And usually people save these things not but they brought it to me and we celebrated that together. Yeah that’s not a moment you can prepare for. Yeah but it’s unfortunately, this is just like literally I always say it’s a drop in the sea of sorrow that Palestinians go through every day. It’s just a microscope of what a Palestinian story is, why Palestinians are so dehumanized. And in this country, in the West, that just all this administration had to say that is that Palestinians and Palestinian and this is what we are fighting against now. It’s just the dehumanization of Palestinians. There’s a way in which your experience inverts the narrative that has taken hold. Look, I’m Jewish. I don’t take anti-Semitism lightly. You should see my inbox. And it can be true that Jews can be unsafe. But the idea and it’s not and it is real that there is anti-Semitism at Columbia. But nobody there ended up as unsafe as you did. Yeah I mean, I would push back regarding anti-Semitism at Columbia. I would really push back on that there was none. I wouldn’t say there was none. I would say there isn’t this manufactured hysteria about anti-Semitism at Columbia because of the protests, because the Proud Boys were at the doors of Columbia, the very right wing, group. And there are incidents here and there. But it’s not that anti-Semitism is happening at Columbia because of the Palestine movement. This is what I would always push back. And I have that strong belief that anti-Semitism and anti-palestinian racism, they rise together the incidents rise together because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways. And I’m not trying to sanitize history or sanitize the present when it comes to that. But also going back to what you said, I paid so much. Because of that rhetoric. Because of Colombia’s like complicity and because of a lot of the students who targeted me are pro-Israel students, it’s not like the same four or five students would tweet about me every day. Just to silence me because it was easier for them to silence me, to throw me in prison than actually reflect on what I’m saying than actually listening to this, even if it’s uncomfortable. And I know it’s uncomfortable because supporting a genocide should be uncomfortable. Like it’s being uncomfortable is very different from being unsafe. And I want to get into the chance like “From the river to the sea,” from “Globalize the intifada” about all of that. Like I heard someone on your podcast saying like oh, I don’t like the chant “globalize the intifada.” Yeah like, don’t like it. It’s not being chanted for you to like it. It’s actually to make you uncomfortable. So you have to think about your complicity in what’s happening. Words matter. And the fact that Palestinians are being attacked for whatever chants, symbols — anything — they do should be addressed. Like Palestinians, you have the BDS, the boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. It’s a very peaceful movement. Yet it was labeled as an antisemitic — And criminalized. And criminalized in the United States. So you’re really same with the chants like you’re getting have people dictating on you what your chant should be. And “Globalize the intifada” is not about violence and globalize the killing and all. It’s not. And it was overwhelmingly civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation. The second intifada included some instances of violence — It included many suicide bombings. Yeah 100 and something. But it also included the killing of 3,000 Palestinians. I’m not — I’m just saying that the fact that many Jewish people hear “Globalize the intifada” as: Globalize the violent struggle is not based on nothing. No, I think it’s based on policing Palestinian thought and speech. That’s why it’s based on because “From the river to the sea” — no one ever said that’s violent, from the Palestinian perspective. No one ever said that it’s a violent call. Yet you see this narrative that, oh, it’s a call to erase Israelis from Palestine, which no one said, that it’s actually the Likud party that says that that’s “from the river to the sea” all should be Jewish sovereignty there. It’s not Palestinians who said that. But there have always been different factions of Palestinians, right. In the same way that you’re saying it’s not fair to ask Palestinians to be perfect victims. It’s also, I think, not reasonable to collapse. There have been much more violent factions of the Palestinian struggle. There have been plenty of periods when what Hamas meant from things like that was. Much more annihilating. But the intifada was not started by Hamas. No, I agree, but it has. But it — but the second intifada. very much involved them. Involved — But that doesn’t mean it started — it started because of — I’m just saying: When you say that, nobody ever said it this way. No, no, I’m saying the way that the students are saying that and even — The students. That’s fair, I think. Yeah, the students never said that. Because to us it means: Let’s globalize the struggle to liberate Palestine — that it shouldn’t feel convenient where Palestinians are being killed every day and the world is silent. That’s what the uprising is about. And again, I don’t want to sanitize history. And I told you the second intifada involved violent acts. But overwhelmingly they were peaceful. And in the second intifada, over 3,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel. The first intifada, 1,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel to the place where I overwhelmingly agree with you is that there is one a broad effort to demand the Palestinians speak perfectly, that it is not demanded of Jewish people. There are no end of chants that happen on Jerusalem Day in Israel, and no end of rhetoric. I went to a synagogue when I was young that I ended up stalking out of when my rabbi told my confirmation class that Israel would be within its rights to displace all Palestinian people. And that was normal. And that was a Reform synagogue. I watched on an interview you were giving the repeated demands that you denounce Hamas, not just killings of civilians, but Hamas itself. There is an insistence that Palestinians, in my experience, denounce struggle almost entirely that don’t understand it as their own struggle. And it’s not applied equally. The demand that you would denounce every part of Israeli government or life, including the ruling government right now that is creating a mass starvation, is not demanded of Jewish people. And so there’s a huge double standard here. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why you wouldn’t find. Many Palestinians, answered that question because it’s not about Hamas. It’s about just the perspective of asking this question. The dehumanization of asking this question. When you’re just like one. Because it’s not about my political view about Hamas. Like they only want to say like, want to hear Yes or no. That’s it. Like, it’s not about what I think about it. And this is being used to credit or discredit like Palestinian. Like if I condemn Hamas, then I am a Palestinian worth of listening to. If I don’t, then I’m not. And this is what gets Palestinians angry with this line of questioning. Because, as I said Palestinians are the ones now being starved, and genocided. And because even if Hamas does not exist tomorrow, the Israeli occupation and supremacy would continue against the Palestinians. So it’s not about Hamas. I want to pick your story back up here. What leads to your release. Now I’m. I’m out on bail with very restrictive like conditions that I have to reside in New York. I have very few places to go to. But federal court ordered that my detention was likely unconstitutional, that I was targeted for my freedom of speech, that there is no evidence of any of what the administration has said about me. But the legal fight is long. The administration is waging a lawfare against me. They are basically appealing every decision trying to bring retaliatory charges against me. So I just like shut up and leave the country. But we will continue the fight because unfortunately, there is no other option right now. You’re giving interviews like this one. You were on Capitol Hill recently. Tell me about that. That decision. I’m demanding accountability for the overreach, for the illegality of my detention. And I want to bring it to what really matters, which is ending the genocide. And that’s why that was center to my conversation, whether with the media or with Congress members. Because what’s happening to me. And to others is just a distraction from the real issue, which is the US complicity in the genocide in Gaza. And yeah, that’s why I like a lot of people tell me like Oh, take a break or why you’re taking all these risks. But I really can’t take a break where the genocide is not taking a break, where as of today, there’s over 100 people. We’re starved to death. That’s why I feel like there is moral imperative to me to speak up. Especially now that I have this platform. They should continue to use. Unfortunately, I did not choose this place. I did however I want to. I want to take that responsibility with pride and continue advocating for the rights of my people, as always. And our final question what are three books you would recommend to the audience. The first book I would recommend is a newly published book, Omar El-Akkad’s book, which is “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Opposed This.” It’s exposing the hypocrisy between the West’s ideals and actions. The second book is Edward Said’s “The Question of Palestine.” That was actually published in, I think, the late ’70s, before Hamas was founded. And it’s a good glimpse into Palestinian thought — when it comes to Palestine and then Zionism and Zionism from the perspective of Palestinians. The third book is “My Promised Land” by Ari Shavit, which mirrors Rashid Khalidi’s “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.” And to me, that was helpful because it shows that the Zionist colonial project started in the 1880s and confirm what Rashid Khalidi said in a lot of places. Yeah, those are the three books that I would recommend. Mahmoud Khalil, Thank you very much. Thank you. Ezra