Days after Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil was detained by US federal immigration authorities, he made his first public remarks, stressing that he was being targeted by President Donald Trump's administration for his political beliefs.

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Calling himself a "political prisoner", Khalil highlighted the conditions faced by immigrants in US detention. 

Khalil was arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently for allegedly leading pro-Palestine protests at the Ivy League campus in New York City in 2024. He was taken from his apartment on March 8. 

Also read: Jewish protesters fill NY's Trump Tower demanding pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil's release, 98 arrested

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Khalil explained that he had to sleep on a "cold floor" at an ICE field office in Lower Manhattan, before being transferred to the Elizabeth Detention Centre in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he "slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request." 

'Trump targeting me...'

Khalil said that the Trump administration is "targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent."

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"Visa holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs," he added. 

Khalil further said that his arrest was a "direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza." 

“With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom," he stressed. 

Also read: Why did Trump administration arrest pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil? What we know

'The only concern at that time...'

In his letter dictated by phone from a detention facility in Louisiana, Khalil said that his only concern at the time of his arrest was the safety of his wife Noor Abdalla, who was about eight months pregnant then. 

"I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side," Khalil said. "DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation."

Also read: Trump says pro-Palestinian campus protester ‘first arrest of many to come’

'Justice escapes contours of US immigration facilities'

As Khalil continued to explain his ordeal at the detention centres, he said, "Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities."

“Who has the right to have rights?” Khalil asked. “It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.”

After Khalil's arrest, Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social, saying Khalil's arrest is "one of many to come" against pro-Palestine students, adding that these protesters are not students but "paid agitators".

Also read: Pro-Palestinian Dark Storm Team behind massive cyberattack that led to X outage?

(With inputs from agencies)