Mahmoud Khalil missed son's birth after US officials denied temporary release
Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate, who has been detained for more than a month over attending pro-Palestinian protests, was denied permission to attend the birth of his first child.
Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, said in a statement that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in New Orleans refused to allow that Khalil be released from detention for two weeks so he could travel to New York and be with his wife when she delivered their son.
Khalil is being held in an ICE facility in Louisiana.
“I welcomed our son into the world earlier today without Mahmoud by my side. Despite our request for ICE (to allow Mahmoud to attend the birth, they denied his temporary release to meet our son,” Abdalla said on X.
“This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer.”
She said that “ICE and the Trump administration have stolen “precious moments” from their young family in an attempt to silence Mahmoud’s support for Palestinian freedom.”
Khalil, 30, is a legal permanent resident of Palestinian descent. His arrest has prompted outrage across the country and fueled tensions between the Trump administration and student movements over immigration policy.
The Trump administration has said it stripped him of his legal status in the US and detained him for his role in pro-Palestinian student protests at the Ivy League campus.
For weeks last spring, students staged daily protests and set up an encampment of several dozen tents on college campuses across the US.
Students, outraged by Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, demanded their universities to divest from companies linked to the Tel Aviv regime.
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