‘No privacy, lights on all time’: Mahmoud Khalil recounts ‘horrendous’ 104 days in ICE detention

Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was released from a federal detention centre on Friday (Jun 20) after a court order, recounted his experience of 104 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. The former Columbia University student, a legal permanent resident in the United States, was arrested by the ICE for allegedly leading pro-Palestine protests at the Ivy League campus in New York City in 2024. Khalil claimed that the government was targeting him for his political beliefs. He was the leader of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest and was arrested in his apartment on March 8.

“I shared a dorm with over 70 men, absolutely no privacy, lights on all the time,” the 30-year-old said on Sunday (Jun 22) at Columbia University. “It’s so normal in detention to see men cry,” Khalil recalled, describing the situation as “horrendous” and “a stain on the US Constitution.”

“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 detailed in his first protest appearance since he was released. “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 deported.” Khalil said that the circumstances of the detention were tough, adding that he took solace where he could find it to gain the strength to carry on.

“It is often hard to find patience in ICE detention,” he said. “The centre is crowded with hundreds of people who are told that their existence is illegal, and not one of us knows when we can go free.” He continued, “At those moments, it was remembering a specific chant that gave me strength: ‘I believe that we will win.’” Khalil said that he scratched the phrase into his bunk bed in detention as a reminder and repeats it even now, “knowing that I have won in a small way by being free today.”

Khalil also attacked Columbia University, where he gave his speech, saying that the institution claims that they “want to protect their international students, while over 100 (days) later, I haven’t received a single call from this university.”

Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, who gave birth to their son while he was in detention, said that his “voice is stronger now than it has ever been.” She added, “One day our son will know that his father did not bow to fear. He will know that his father stood up when it was hardest, and that the world stood with him.”