Mahmoud Khalil stood on the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Sunday afternoon and told a crowd of hundreds about the long weeks he spent in ICE detention following his arrest on March 8.
Khalil — a green card holder — had been in ICE custody more than three months after being detained in March for his role in the 2024 Columbia University pro-Palestine protests, during which he served as a negotiator and spokesperson for the participants. A judge ordered his release on Friday, and he was reunited with his family the following day.
While speaking at the rally outside the cathedral on June 22, Khalil recounted the horrid and dehumanizing conditions in federal custody, saying that while his arrest made headlines nationwide, he shared close quarters with people in even worse situations.
“I shared a dorm with over 70 men, absolutely no privacy, lights on all the time. I spent my days listening to one tragic story after another, listening to a father of four whose wife is battling cancer and he’s in detention,” Khalil said. “I listened to a story of an individual who has been in the United States for over 20 years, all his children are American, yet he’s been deported. It’s so normal in detention to see men cry.”
Moments before his speech, Khalil appeared with his wife Noor Abdalla on the cathedral steps as hundreds of supporters thunderously cheered and waved signs reading “welcome home”; St. John the Divine hosted the rally after Columbia University refused to permit the event at their gates.
Khalil was taken from his home at Columbia University, and while incarcerated in Louisiana, he missed the birth of his child.
“It felt like it was literally being kidnapped, where you have plane clone agents literally snatching you off your apartment building, without introducing themselves, without producing an arrest warrant. I was mostly concerned about my then-pregnant wife,” Khalil said. “They basically cut off any means of communication for over 30 hours. These 30 hours were the most difficult time during the whole experience, the fact that you don’t know what’s happening.”
He called out the school for failing to advocate for him and his family, stating that months later, he still hasn’t heard from them.
“The hypocrisy of Columbia University, a university that just two weeks ago said that they want to protect their international students. Why? Over 100 days later, I haven’t received a single call from this university,” he said. “Maybe if there is a financial gain for them from doing that, they would have done.”
Following the rally, Khalil led a brief march to Columbia University alongside his supporters and legal team.
