Mahmoud Khalil, the detainedColumbia Universitygraduate and Palestinian activist, was not allowed to hold his newborn son after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials refused to allow a contact visit between him and his family, his lawyers said on Wednesday.
Instead,Khalil, 30, was forced to meet his month-old baby for the first time behind glass, after his wife, Noor Abdalla, traveled from New York to the Louisiana detention facility where he has been detained since March, his legal team said.
Ice officials and a private prison contractor denied the family’s request for a contact visit, citing the detention center’s no-contact visitation policy and unspecified “security concerns”, lawyers said.
Abdalla, a US citizen whogave birth to their first childlast month while Khalil was in detention, said she was “furious at the cruelty and inhumanity of this system that dares to call itself just”.
“After flying over a thousand miles toLouisianawith our newborn son, his very first flight, all so his father could finally hold him in his arms, Ice has denied us even this most basic human right,” she said in a statement.
“This is not just heartless. It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The department had previously denied Khalil’s request to be at his wife’s side to attend the birth of their son in New York, a move that Abdalla described as “a purposeful decision by Ice to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer”. Instead, he was only able to experience his child’s birth via a telephone call.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident, or US green-card holder, was arrested in New York on 8 March in the first in a string of Ice arrests targeting pro-Palestinian students and scholars, and put in detention without due process.
Ina letter to his son published in the Guardian, Khalil wrote shortly after the birth: “My heart aches that I could not hold you in my arms and hear your first cry, that I could not unfurl your clenched fists or change your first diaper.”
“My absence is not unique,” he continued. “Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life … The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations.”
The current president ofColumbia Universityin New York, Claire Shipman, where Khalil had been finishing up his graduate studies, wasbooed and heckledon both Tuesday andWednesdayby graduates at their commencement ceremonies who also were furious that Khalil was in detention. Many chanted “free Mahmoud”, as Shipman acknowledged their frustration.
The Trump administrationis usingobscure immigration law to makeextraordinary claimsin cases such as Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. Khalil is Palestinian and was born in a refugee camp in Syria. His wifeaccepteda graduate diploma on his behalf at an alternative graduation ceremony in New York on Sunday, while holding their baby.