A Political Prisoner Is Being Held In Louisiana

"I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear." - Mahmoud Khalil

One of the greatest ironies of our time is that while Syrians were celebrating the first anniversary of the revolution since their liberation from Bashar al-Assad, a Palestinian man from Syria was being held in a Louisiana prison for exercising his right to freedom of speech.

Of course, I’m talking about Mahmoud Khalil—a man who I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since he was arrested kidnapped from his home by plain-clothed ICE and DHS officers secret police earlier this year, in front of his pregnant wife, Noor. Like many of my closest friends, Mahmoud grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, and met Noor—a US citizen—while they were both volunteering helping Syrian refugee children in Beirut. After many years of a long distance relationship, no doubt constricted by the politics of passports, papers, and romance, they were finally able to reunite in New York City, where Mahmoud got a scholarship to study at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and the two were married in June of 2023.

Of course, Mahmoud felt moved to join the student movement once the genocide broke out in Gaza—I can only imagine how surreal it would have been for him to witness the way that the US mainstream media reacted to Palestinians’ right to self determination, and the joy he felt seeing that us—the American people—do not agree with this. While many of the student protestors covered their faces and understandably refused to speak to the media, Mahmoud was outspoken, giving dozens of media interviews, and even negotiating with Columbia University to meet some of the students’ demands in a productive, non-violent way. He probably never thought that he would be punished the way he would have been punished had he spoken out against the regime in Syria—this was, after all, the land of the free.

But he started to become afraid when he was the target of a relentless doxxing campaign—lead by Pro-Israel student groups on Columbia University’s campus, who pulled photographs and media interviews (frequently taken out of context) and published lengthy Twitter (I’m sorry, X) threads about how he is a terrorist, this time tagging Secretary of State Marco Rubio and calling for his deportation. Noor told him that he had nothing to worry about—as the spouse of a US citizen, he had a green card, and this was supposed to protect him from being deported.

Within hours, ICE was at his door—and by now, the heartbreaking video of his arrest has been made public.

Now, I can tell you from personal experience that having the love of your life detained in front of your eyes is one of the most horrifying experiences you can possibly imagine—and devastatingly, Noor is not the only person to experience it right now. Trump’s mass deportations campaign has separated hundreds of families across the United States, many of whom are being held in legal limbo in hotels in Panama, or even in a detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, stuck between borders until they hear their fate.

As it so happens, Mahmoud Khalil is actually being held in the same ICE detention facility that Darwin, one of the protagonists of Love Across Borders was held in when he was separated from his partner, Oscar. While reporting this chapter, I learned that this is actually a common ICE tactic; rather than detaining someone in a city where they have ties, where they could presumably receive visits from their loved ones, they are transferred and flown across the United States without warning, often held in remote and rural areas that are very far from cities and airports. It makes it nearly impossible to visit them, and makes it much harder to access legal representation. Fortunately, a judge has recently ruled that Khalil’s case will be heard in New Jersey—but it was poised to be heard in New Orleans, which has a notoriously conservative court which could have set a dangerous precedent for deportations. It is these kinds of small, but crucial legal battles which will set the tone for our future.

One of the barometers I’ve been using to try to understand my country’s descent into fascism is a comparison to my husband’s country—how close is Trump’s America to Bashar al-Assad’s regime? I notice the way that I’m writing this under my real name, the easy and uninhibited political conversations that I have on WhatsApp, the commissions that I get from editors who are ready to hold fascism to account. I breathe easier. For all that social media platforms shadow ban political content, or vaccine-hating moms get together to take LGBTQ books out of school libraries, we are still a far cry from being the kind of country that imprisons people just for their opinions.

Khalil’s arrest unquestionably moved us closer to the worst kind of dictatorship that there is—Noor, herself, brought this up in her first statement to the press where she referenced her own parent’s flight from Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and how she never imagined knowing that kind of fear until her husband was taken in front of her eyes. Nevertheless, narrative of a young man being kidnapped in front of his heavily pregnant wife has been all but lost on the conservative media, whose obsession with family values only extends so far and disappears the minute that Black men are incarcerated, Latino men are deported and Palestinian men are disappeared. Instead, they have followed in the footsteps of doxxing websites like Canary Mission, celebrating Khalil’s arrest as part of Trump’s crackdown on antisemitism and terrorism sympathizers, and calling for more arrests of others like Khalil.

If this doesn’t remind you of the red scare, I don’t know what will. It’s a page ripped straight out of the authoritarian playbook, a coordinated disinformation campaign that whips the public into a frenzy by smearing dissidents into terrorists, and then uses this as an excuse to crackdown on our right to protest and express our opinions at a very time when these protests are needed the most.

Luckily, Mahmoud has not fully disappeared into the bowels of the US immigration system. Since his arrest, Mahmoud has been able to speak to his wife, lawyer and most recently, given a statement to The Guardian, who has published a letter that he has authored, drawing on everything from the horrible conditions that immigrants are held in across the alleged “land of the free” to the fact that during his detention, Israel has broken it’s ceasefire, and reignited its assault on Gaza.

Those who know Mahmoud have aptly pointed out that he would want us to be focussing on the bigger picture—the fact that a mere days after he was arrested and imprisoned, Israel once again started a relentless bombing campaign on Gaza. People who had started cautiously returning to normal life—going home, and surveying the damage, thinking about what it would take to rebuild after fifteen months of horror that left them with nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has released AI-generated slop that shows bearded belly dancers and a significantly slimmed down Elon Musk eating hummus bil la7meh on a Middle Eastern riviera, no doubt populated by lucrative real estate investments for Jared Kushner.

In his statement, Khalil pointed out that it is no coincidence that Trump is trying to criminalize dissent and protest of Israel’s actions at this time—and you do not have to look very far to see the disinformation machine at work. Organizations, like Canary Mission and Betar are already compiling lists of other students to target for deportation—and Trump has flexed his muscle through ICE to show that he is not afraid to arrest, detain and even torture other Green Card holders, even if they’ve committed only a small-scale offense. The State Department has openly stated that it will use AI to comb through suspicious profiles—which is horrifying when you consider the way that these doxxing websites comb social media profiles, and then add their own keywords—words like “terrorism” and “pro Hamas encampment” that activists would never use to describe their sympathies.

Now, I’m left wondering how we fight back. As a journalist who started her career in the West Bank, I am often struck by how little people know about the history of Palestinians—and the impact that this lack of knowledge has on the way that Palestinians and those who stand up for their rights are treated. While almost everyone understands what happened during the Holocaust, far fewer people have learned the history of the Nakba—or the hardships that Palestinians have endured since then. Erasing this history is an act of violence in and of itself that allows the powers that be to contort Palestinians into terrorists and sell this image to the public. It bullies us into silence—making us afraid to speak out for justice, lest it is smeared as antisemitism or terrorism, and makes us unhirable or problematic (which were, until recently, the most significant consequences an American could face for speaking out).

To this end, a number of Palestinian journalists and filmmakers have made their work free for public consumption, so if you’re wondering about this history yourself, I hope you’ll take the time to check it out—and support other Palestinian and Arab-American authors, filmmakers and creators as well.

While these legal battles ahead will take far more than money, money can be helpful for those in the throes of it—and if you are able to donate to Mahmoud and Noor’s legal fund, a link is here. Also, there are a number of organizations helping immigrants who do not have high profile cases, and I highly recommend this one, which helps undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers fight their cases and find a legal way to stay in the United States. Of course, there are still many families in Gaza that need help, too.

If anyone has other ideas of ways that we can fight fascism—and fight for our freedom of speech, and dignity for everyone who is a part of our country, regardless of their legal status—I am all ears. Don’t hesitate to get in touch, as I really want to know, especially if you have experience doing this in your own country.

Until next time,

Anna