Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil known as himself a “political prisoner” in a brand new letter dictated from the Louisiana detention heart the place he stays held following his arrest on Columbia College’s campus.
“I’m writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana the place I wake to chilly mornings and spend lengthy days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway towards an important many individuals precluded from the protections of the regulation,” Khalil said within the letter, which was dictated over the telephone to his household and obtained by ABC Information from his authorized staff on Tuesday.
Khalil, a frontrunner of the encampment protests at Columbia final spring, was detained on March 8. He was taken from his pupil house constructing to 26 Federal Plaza in decrease Manhattan, after which to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in response to his authorized staff.
Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of media in regards to the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia College in the course of the ongoing battle between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, in New York Metropolis, U.S., June 1, 2024. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Picture
Jeenah Moon/Reuters
Officers from President Donald Trump’s administration have stated Khalil was detained for his purported help of Hamas — a declare his authorized staff has rejected.
Khalil’s attorneys stated that in his detainment, plain-clothed Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers stated his pupil visa had been revoked — although Khalil is within the U.S. on a inexperienced card. He has not been charged with a criminal offense.
A federal decide has blocked Khalil’s removing from the U.S. whereas weighing a petition difficult his arrest.
He’s set to look earlier than an immigration decide on March 27.
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