The Palestinian activist and organizer of the pro-Hamas protests at Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil, has declared himself a “political prisoner.”
In his first remarks since he was detained with a view to revoking his permanent residency, Khalil also complained about the “cold mornings” he was experiencing at his ICE detention facility in Louisiana.
“I am a political prisoner,” he said in a statement circulating online.
“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.”
Khalil added that the Trump administration “is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent” and warned that all “visa-holders, green-card carriers and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.”
He continued:
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.
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.
As a graduate student at Columbia University, Khalil helped organize the notorious anti-Israel protests that heavily disrupted life on campus and threatened the safety of Jewish students.
During one of his protests at Barnard College, fellow activists distributed pamphlets sourced from the “Hamas media office,” directly linking the demonstration to Hamas propaganda.
Wow. Read this full letter from Mahmoud Khalil. “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.” pic.twitter.com/CfhGd5gdSw
— Sarah Lazare (@sarahlazare) March 18, 2025
Hamas is designed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
However, there are other questions surrounding Khalil’s background.
Earlier today, The Gateway Pundit revealed how Mahmoud may have links to both American and British intelligence agencies, even holding a security clearance from the latter.
Khalil eventually moved to New York City in 2022 on a student visa to attend the Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).
Whatever his motives, the good news is he won’t be America’s problem much longer.
