The Ezra Klein Show - Mahmoud Khalil Tells His Story

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Mahmoud Khalil was a leader in Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests. In March, he was arrested by ICE agents and held for more than 100 days in a Louisiana detention facility. The Trump administration claims Khalil is deportable — even though he has a green card, married to a U.S. citizen — because he poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy goals.Khalil’s alleged offense here is speech.Khalil is out now on bail, and he’s still speaking. I wanted to hear what he had to say.Mentioned:A Letter From Palestinian Activist Mahmoud KhalilThe Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid KhalidiBook Recommendations:One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El AkkadThe Question of Palestine by Edward SaidMy Promised Land by Ari ShavitThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [e-mail] can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.htmlThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Carole Sabouraud, Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

You know, 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. Then they got power, and this administration came after speech in a way the left never dared to do, 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 it 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, who'd been a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia, a leader in the school's anti-Israel protests, Cleo's 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 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 threatened 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 plain-closed officers and taken to an ICE detention center in Louisiana for more than a hundred days, in prison there while his wife gave birth, because the U.S. government feared him. He was in prison there because U.S. government wanted others like him to fear them. It 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? Khal is out now on bail. He's still speaking. And so I wanted to hear what he had to say. There's always my email as Recline Show at NYTimes.com. Bakhmud Khalil, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, sir. 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 Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus, called Khanshjeeh camp. It's really, like, I wouldn't say, like, a poor, like, neighborhood, but, you know, 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, like, just working in a civil office issuing passports, IDs to people.

My dad was a wielder working in a state company. Doing like metal work? Yeah. And what did they want for you? Like 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 that, you know, my dad barely made it to middle school. My mom had only like high school.

And when you're Palestinian in Syria, when you don't have any property, there's nothing like, you know, in terms of like family. wealth. So education is our main investment. So we really like my parents would rather us getting educated than actually getting food at some, at a lot of points. What were you told about your family's history in Palestine growing up? How did that, how was that identity formed for you? You know, what I know about Palestine. I heard from my grand mother who spent 30 years. in Palestine, in Tiberias. And actually, my grandmother would always tell me

that they had Jewish neighbors. She would work in their farm. So we had that sense of, you know, 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 like injustice, that sense of Palestine was taken from us, was stolen from us. The camp is just like about 30, 40 miles away from the borders. You can see the impact of Nekba, 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 literally just a normal tent for a number of years before upgrading it to a mud house. And then they decided to build sort of 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 said you grew up in Syria and you had to flee during the uprising. Tell me about that moment. What leads to you deciding you have to leave? The Syrian people erupted against the autocracy in Syria, 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 11th, 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 did 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 sort of 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 with a very small group of friends, we started to organize small protest. And by a protest, I mean, it would last for five, ten minutes because you fear that the moukhaberat 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 an evocation of your degree. It was literally death. Yeah. 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 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? 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. like about me. I feared that I would be next. But I also I feared that my name is already with the regime. So I literally like same day plan. I went to Lebanon. In a car. In a car. Yeah, 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. 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're very expensive, and they had no money whatsoever.

So I started working in construction just to make living, and then I saw the opportunity to volunteer in this organization. It's a Syrian-American organization called Jusur providing opportunities, education opportunities for Syrians around the world. And they volunteered there, and then 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. How? So because Jussur is a Syrian-American organization,

we had a lot of American volunteers. So I would just talk with them. I would communicate with them, not with words. It's just like here. They're like, you know, very broken English. 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. 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. Because to learn, 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 Saeed, the Palestinian-American academic and writer. So I heard also a lot about Colombia. So I was like, yes, Colombia in New York right next to the U.N., 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 love inside 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 that impact on me as a Palestinian.

However, working for the British Embassy, I would always meet American diplomats. So because the British and the U.S. policy, goals regarding Syria are quite similar. So I would spend a lot of time with American diplomats just discussing, you know, like Syria and all of that. And the most important thing I liked about the U.S. is the quality of education. What year is this we're talking?

So the first time I applied to Colombia was in 2020. I got accepted, but I couldn't come because of COVID. So I came in 2022 to the United States. Before October 7th, 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 died because of the earthquake. So, but I continued, like, you know, I wanted also to be involved in as many communities as possible being the first time living in the country. I wanted to have friends. So I joined the Mina 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. 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, wise that like we're inviting someone from Human Rights Watch. So I was very surprised that this event was flagged as special event. That's even before October 7th. That was I think was April or March 2023. Another event inviting the BDS coordinator, 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 at Columbia. It just, like, to me, felt like, okay, it's maybe bureaucratic, you know, like, it's not a big deal.

But that was more obvious, like, after October 7, the fact that Colombia is the anti-Palestinian, like, prejudice within the Columbia administration, I'm saying, Like, it's very flagrant. Tell me about that for a minute before we get to October 7th itself, because Columbia now has these dual reputations as sort of what you're describing, that it had a 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 Colombia. Colombia is a for-profit place.

Colombia 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 functionality. Absolutely. October 7th happens. What do you think that day?

That day, I was at the cinema with, with my wife, Noor, here, like in Lincoln Center. And when I left the cinema around like 12, 30 a.m., 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 Noor was very worried about, like, just my health. And it was heavy.

Like, I still remember, like, I was like, this couldn't happen. What do you mean we had to reach this moment? What moment is this? I was interning at Onurwa at that point, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency at the UN, at their New York office. And as part of my internship, my research and work was focused on, you know, 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, you know, looking at Palestinians as. if Palestinians are not part of the equation, and they circumvented the Palestinian question. And it's clear, like, it's becoming more and more violent.

Like, you know, 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, like, unfortunately, we couldn't avoid such a moment. And, yeah, it was absolutely difficult, like, you know, to see not only the horrific images, but also the response of Israel. Because I knew what, I knew, like, that's what Netanyahu wants, because Netanyahu thrives on a killing of Palestinians. At that point, there were already big demonstrations in Israel.

regarding the judicial reforms. But I knew that that's something that Netanyahu would use to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. 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 the nature of your...

Just thinking about the future, to be honest, worried about the future. And I remember one of the things I said, this is going to be even worse than the Nakba, like the aftermath. And I had to think, like, you know, like how can you stop this? What can we do?

Also just following, like, is it really, you know, a day or two days after when the Israeli or the former Israeli defense minister said, like, we're going to cut everything from Gaza? human animals, all of that. So the intent was clear that they want to obliterate Ghazza. I remember I did a piece right after October 7th, and one of the things seemed clear to me,

like very, very quickly on that day as you're watching, the images you're hearing, you know, the screams, you're seeing the videos of people of Jewish Israelis being paraded around, of corpses, is both that they're not. this attack is horrific, and that the counterattack is going to be overwhelming, right? And that on some level, I understood that as something Hamas must have wanted, right? Pull Israel into this attack, pulled 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 ships on the table. Was that your perception, or did you see this as something that needed to happen to break the equilibrium? Yeah. It's more the latter, like just to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard. And to me, it's a desperate attempt to the word 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 all obvious is not, you know, we're not right. I've heard you in other news be very clear in condemning killing of civilians. October 7th was obviously an operation that did target a lot of civilians, that did kill a lot of civilians. Do you see that is unavoidable, that the Hamas had no other choice? Do you see it as a mistake?

Well, I know it's 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 like 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 it applies to others but also like there's another point to this Israel Palestinians don't have to be perfect victim And that's what the word 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, you know, being under siege for over at that point 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, like, Unfortunately, these horrible things aren't happening or what happened, but we cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims. So tell me about from there to the organizing for you. When do the protests and the encampments begin? What is your initial involvement in them? It goes back before October 7, my involvement in Palestine, organizing on campus.

And they 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 7th to be, you know, I was the co-president of this new society, but I was also a co-president of the Palestine working group at SEPA. So I had this relationship with the Columbia administration, you know, most of them like junior officers.

I've heard you describe yourself previously to this. You're a bureaucrat. Yeah. And it sounds like you maintain some of that identity at Columbia. Yeah. A sort of person working within systems. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, you know, most of the students are young. They don't have this, like, 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, I think, 9 or 10, I sent Colombia, you know, an appeal from the Palestinian students regarding the one-sided narrative that Colombia is trying to push, regarding academic accommodations for Palestinian students like myself who had been awake for days just watching the herders in Gaza. When you say one side of the narrative,

Colombia was pushing, what narrative in what form? What is the... So the narrative that Colombia pushed from the very beginning was a very pro-Israel narrative. By October 8, there was hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel. Yeah, Colombia 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, you know, no answers whatsoever.

And the ask here would have meant in these communications being more... Yeah, being more balanced in terms of acknowledging the Palestinian death, acknowledging the humanitarian crisis, 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, like, in the whole movement,

this movement is about equality and justice. And Colombia did that, like, 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 Columbia 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 protests that later become very well known? Yeah. I must mention that the first protest that happened at Columbia was on October 12, five, six days after October 7. 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 Colombia made the mistake of putting these protests in front of each other. So the university decides where you can be.

Exactly. So they gave students supporting Palestine the East Lawn. and students supporting Israel, the West lawn. 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 the investments where Colombia 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 that in 2002, Colombia students voted to ask Colombia or to demand Colombia 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. Quad, 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 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 Colombia, 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 Colombia was not listening to whatsoever. You sort of described the groups you were in here as a Palestinian groups, but as you mentioned, many go Jewish Voices for Peace, which is also a student

group, is involved in, I believe, from the beginning in these protests too, 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 sort of relationships and dynamics like? You know, having lived in the Middle East most of my life, unfortunately, the only Jew you hear about is the one who's trying to kill you. You know, and that's true for those in Ghazan in the West Bank. That's the only Jewish person they encounter the one at the checkpoints, the one raiding their homes. And for me, because I was involved in this international work, I met like a lot of Jews through my work. And coming in the United States, it was an opportunity for me to expand on that,

to really understand, you know, like, 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, like, 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. 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 country, that have human rights abuses or international law abuses, the cutting of ties to Israeli universities, and knowledge of where Colombia's money is going.

The sort of more macro demand, the thing you hear in chance, 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 like one state or two states. What's the form of governance would be for a liberated Palestine? I mean, I have views on that as a Palestinian. But

that was what the movement was about just to end this occupation, to end the apartheid, to end the genocide now, and to have justice, freedom, and dignity for everyone. I remember the Columbia protest

before I knew who you were, become a national story, right? And hearing about them constantly and at every dinner I seem to go to and then being defined by positions that they feel more extreme than that. You know, famously a student saying this got attributed to you, but it wasn't you,

that Zionists don't deserve to live. 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, like, 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 always like just a distraction such sentiment about the movement

that it's violent that it wants to eradicate Israel or the Jewish people because it's not they they we are at the 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 and given my experience in diplomacy, the students and faculty approach me to negotiate on their behalf and also as a Palestinian. And like, I can't relate more to the demands. So I was negotiating with two top administrators at Columbia. However, Colombia did not want to negotiate. They just wanted to buy time. And it was, you know, disheartening because these students were protesting since October.

Every single week you have a protest. The students submitted proposals to Colombia's committee on diversions. and the proposals were rejected. When you have Colombia suspending, like, S.J.P. 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. and that's how the encampment happened. 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 a.m. So that was the... To uproot the encampments. Yeah, exactly. Many of the people protesting, many of the leaders of the protests 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.

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, Bitar harassing these students and posting their information online, calling their parents, calling their employers. So there was this fear. And you're a target of these groups? I was a target.

I'm still a target of these groups. But to me, like, my risk appetite was higher than others. Like, why would 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. 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 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, you know, First Amendment. but I did not feel that, like, the government would actually act on such claims, baseless claims against me.

And, I mean, I was wrong, like, eventually, that the US 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, the set of issues that you care about, the conflict 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 elections 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, you know, 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, you know, Trump would expose this hypocrisy. And...

The 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 pledges is to set the Palestine movement in this country 20 years back. I think that's what 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 U.S. government institutions. So in the early days of March,

you reach out to Columbia University. You say that something is changing, that you're feeling unsafe. What were you seeing? So, you know, after the executive order in January, targeting basically like student activists by the Trump administration,

These shady groups like Canary Mission and Bitar became more emboldened. They were more vicious in their attacks online. And the week leading to my arrest, I noticed like 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 Columbia administration a couple of emails like asking for mainly what I was thinking about like I just want a lawyer to send this organization

as he's in the assessed letter and so walk me through what happens on March 8th on March 8th I was coming back from an Aftar 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, you know, 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 onto, like, someone to come. So at some point there were four people. I asked for, do you have, like, any arrest warrant or anything, like, to show me? And they refused to do that. They threatened Noor, my wife, of arrest, if she doesn't leave.

So Noor 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 Noor, like, 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. During all that period, I was chill. Like, I was very calm again. Like, I've dealt with power 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, you know, 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 five hours after they showed me there will be determination that my presence in the United States presents, I think, adversarial, I can't remember that. But like it's foreign policy threat. Yeah, 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 ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable. Exactly. And they show you that?

Yeah, they gave it to me five hours after. And they laughed when I saw it. I was like, well, what did they do? even the officer like shrugged like you know giving me the NTA the notice to appear but at the same time

I heard someone approaching the officer at the White House is requesting an update and I requested endless times to call my lawyer

I told them like I want to talk to my lawyer before signing or just like to know what's happening and they refused and they refused And then they moved me 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. Okay, in 30 hours? In 30 hours.

So everything was like 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, and, you know, these practices were kind of present in Syria, where you have a security branch, like 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 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 Noor 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 Noor? Is the baby okay? Is she okay? And I wanted, like, answers, but they refused to give any answers. And I was, again, like, just shackled 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 immigrant? I didn't know any of that. So when we arrived there, we arrived at like 1 in the morning, like 1 a.m. And we get to the detention center. They put me in this dorm with over 70 men, then in the morning I learned that this is a nice detention facility that everyone here are undocumented or they are here because of their documents.

You know, I felt better because now like, 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 to ask someone how can I operate the phone that I called Noor. And I just wanted, like, I called Noor, just wanted, like, you know, like, is she going to pick up, not, like, what's happening on the outside word. And Noor, yeah, picked up and we talked. And the first thing he told me, like, the White House has tweeted about you. What did Trump say about you that day? Shalom Mahmood.

Right, I remember that tweet. Yeah. So, I mean, he said later a lot of things about, like, Hamas sympathizer, uh, Rub, you said young aspiring terrorists, something like that. 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 a tweets and of such portrayal in the media

was so difficult to me on a person. level um and yeah but like i kept asking like is what's happening is is legal like i fled syria fearing political prosecution to come to the united states to face like the same fate of political prosecution do you have a view on why it was you um i will say because i had to i prepared for this show and i went looking for okay i need to to make sure I know 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 part of, that kind of thing.

I couldn't find that much from you. Yeah. I mean, I joked with a couple of friends before my detention that I would be, like, Trump's perfect target if he want to do anything regarding that. But still it was a joke. Why would you be as perfect target? A Palestinian. My name is Mahmoud.

And 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 like because he hates me or like because I, you know, 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 to make an example out of me that like even if you are a permit 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 bomb things. But like I presented a different reality to that,

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 like from the strong belief in human rights and the dignity of all people. So the legal grounds here are someone, an alien in the language of the law here, who the Secretary of State is reasonable ground 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 a 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, you know, baseless.

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 unconditional 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-Hamaas speech. And that's their main goal, but a court, a federal court, a judge, said that it's likely unconstitutional that the administration targeted me.

And I'm not sure how much you know, but like this provision was used in the 50s to go after Jewish immigrants in this country. It has a very proud lineage. You sort of touches glancingly, but one of the arguments, they've made about you is, I think the word they used was aligned. The Iraqis are aligned with Hamas. And Hamas is a designated terrorist organization under U.S. law.

And so, again, that would make you potentially in conflict with American foreign policy. 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. What I stand for, what I'm 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 why I stand for. The other thing, and this has become, I think, more present in the administration's rhetoric, not just about you. J.D. Vanz just gave a speech about citizenship where he makes his 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's 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. 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. You know, this is about selective then democracy, selective rights to people. And this administration is trying to target anyone 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 what they want us to do. And the same with the privilege part of it. It's the privilege of the law, not the privilege of the administration to be in this country. I'm married to an American citizen who was born in this country. My son is American. So I get that privilege from the law This is how this 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 democracy

then it's just you know like I'm not sure 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 would 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 do 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, in the ICE detention centers during those 104 days. You know, coming to America to study and, you know, to live, life here. I never imagined that there is such injustices happening on U.S. soil. I mean, one example is a 45-year-old man who has been in this country for since 2021, 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 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 was, you know, 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, you don't know what this is. He was like, no, 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,

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, 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 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. Their dehumanization around being named criminals on the news, while the vast majority of them were 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-Rent, 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. To me, like, having, you know, like 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 about, like, yeah, who has rights to have right? If me being, you know, illegal permanent resident in this country, an educated person, 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. Noor and I have always dreamt about this moment.

I mean, every parent have done the same. And to me, to lose that moment, because the parents, decided so felt difficult the dehumanization of that moment that I had to be on the phone listening to my wife at 2.30 in the morning, like listening just to her screams and I can't, you know, I can't hold her hands or give her any supporting like words in a place where, you know, I can't even raise my voice at that at that time. You're listening in this room with... Yeah, I was on the phone, yeah.

Like, there was like 70 people. They were asleep, like the majority of them. I was also, like, trying to resist crying at that moment. Like, 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, like, temporary or for law, temporary release, but it was refused immediately.

And we gave them, you can't put all the conditions. Like, you want just, like, for two hours, just for me to be in that room. 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. 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, you know, I had to wait a number of hours until I could like receive a picture of Dean 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 is like you're not okay because I stayed on my bunk. like the whole day. Then he told me, like, you're not okay. I told him, like, yeah, my wife give birth today. And then an hour after, like, you know, they, it's just a detention made like cake. It's not like a real cake, but like it's, yeah,

but that felt, you know, like to have them. And usually people save these things, you know, not. But they brought it to like to me and we celebrated that together. Yeah, that's not a. moment you can prepare for. Yeah. But 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 microcom of what a Palestinian story is, why Palestinians are so dehumanized in this country

in the West, that just all This administration had to say that, is that I'm 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 is real that there was 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. But there was none? I wouldn't say there was none.

I would say there isn't this manufactured hysteria about anti-Semitism. Colombia, because of the protests. Because proud boys were at the doors of Colombia, the very right-wing, you know, like, group. And there are incidents here and there, but it's not that, like, anti-Semitism is happening at Colombia because of, like, the Palestine movement. This is why I would always push back. And I have, like, that strong belief that anti-Semitism

and anti-Palestinian racism, they rise together. Like, the incidents rise together, because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways. And I'm not trying, like, to sanitize history or sanitize, like, the present when it comes to that. But going back to what you said, like, I paid so much because of that rhetoric, because of Colombia's like complicity and because of, you know, a lot of the students who targeted me are pro-Israel students. Like, you know, 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 being uncomfortable is very different from being unsafe. And I want to get into like, you know, like 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, oh, I don't like the chant globalized antifada. Yeah, like, don't like it. Like, it's not, 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 and what's happening. And words matter. And the fact that Palestinians are being attacked for whatever chance, symbols, anything they do, should be addressed. Like, Palestinians, you know, You have the BDS, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. It's a very peaceful movement, and yet it was labeled as an anti-semit, like, anti-Semitic.

And criminalized in the United States. So you have people dictating on you what your chant should be. And with a globalized antifada, it's now about, like, violence and, you know, like, globalized. the killing and all of it's not and it was overwhelmingly civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation. The second Intifada included some instances of violence. Could in many suicide bombings. Yeah, include one hundred and something, but it's also included the killing of 3,000 Palestinians. I'm not I'm just saying that the fact that many Jewish people here globalized intifada as globalize the violent struggle.

is not based on nothing. No, I think it's based on on policing Palestinian thought and speech. That's what it's based on, because from the river to the sea, no one ever said that it's a violent, from the Palestinian perspective, no one ever said that it's a violent call.

Yeah, 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. It's all should be like 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 annihilatory. But the Intifada was not started by Hamas. agree, but it has, but it, but the second indifada 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 like, the way that the students are saying that. And even, even the students, that's fair, I think. Yeah, the students never said that, like, because to us, it means let's globalize the struggle to liberate Palestine, that it shouldn't feel convenient where Palestinian are being killed every day and the world is silent. That's what the uprising is about. And again, like, I don't want to sanitize history

and I told you, like, 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, too.

the place where I overwhelmingly agree with you is that there is one a broad effort to demand the Palestinians speak perfectly that is not demanded of Jewish people there are no end of chance that happened on Jerusalem Day in Israel and no end of rhetoric I mean I went to a synagogue when I was young that I ended up stalking out of when my rabbi told my confirmation class that it will be within its race to displace all Palestinian people. And that was normal. And that was a reform synagogue. I watched on an interview you were giving. The sort of repeated demands that you denounce Hamas, not just killings of civilians, but Hamas itself. There is a insistence that Palestinians, in my experience, sort of denounce struggle almost entirely. They 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 masturbation is not demanded of Jewish people. And so there is, there's a huge double standard here. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why you wouldn't find many Palestinians answer that question. It's not about Hamas. It's about just the perspective of asking this question, the dehumanization of asking this question, 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, like, 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, like Palestinians are the one now being like starved and genocided. 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?

You know, now I'm out on bail with very restrictive conditions that I have to reside in New York, very few places to go to. But a federal court ordered that my detention was likely unconstitutional, that I was targeted. for my freedom of speech, that there is no evidence 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, you know, I just like shut up and leave the country. But we'll continue to fight because, unfortunately, there's no other option right now. You're giving interviews like this one. You were on Capitol Hill recently.

Tell me about that decision. I'm demanding accountability for the overreach, for the illegality for the illegality of my attention. And I want to bring it to what really matters, which is ending the genocide in Gaza. That's why that was centered 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 U.S. complicity in the genocide in Gaza. That's why I, you know, 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. There is, like, moral imperative to me to speak up, especially now that I have this platform. that I should continue to use. Unfortunately, I did not choose this place, you know, ICE did. However, I want to take that responsibility with pride and continue advocating for the rights of my people. As always, then, our final question, what are the books you recommend to the audience?

The first book I would recommend is a newly published book, Umar al-Aad's book, which is one day everyone will have always opposed this. It's sort of like exposing the hypocrisy between the West ideals and actions. The second book is Edward Saeed, The Question of Palestine. That was actually published like in, I think, late 70s before Hamas was founded. And it's a good glimpse into the Palestinian, thought when it comes to Palestine and Zionism and Zionism from the perspective of Palestinians.

The third book is My Promised Land by Arishafet, which mirrors Rashid Khalidhi's hundreds of wars on Palestine. And to me, that was helpful because it shows that the Zionist colonial project started like in the 80s and sort of confirmed. what Rashid Khalidi say in a lot of places. The 1880s. The 1880s, yeah. Those are the three books that I would recommend. Mahmoud Khalil.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Ezra. This episode of Vesalancho is produced by Jack McCordick and Roland Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior audio engineer is Jeff Gelb, with additional mixing by Amman Zahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin, Marie Cassione, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Kristen Lynn, and Jan Kobel.

Original music by Carol Sabarow, Amon Zahota, and Pat McCusker. Audience Strategy by Christina Samaluski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times opinion audio is Annie Rose Strasser.