the other side of the story;

Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder with permanent residency, has released his first public statement since his arrest on March 8. He was taken into custody by plainclothes Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers in the lobby of his Columbia University apartment complex due to his alleged connection to Hamas. His statement, released Tuesday, was dictated by phone to family members from an ICE center in Louisiana.

Khalil, who has not yet been charged with a crime, said he is a “political prisoner” and expressed concern with the political and social climate in the United States that led to his arrest. He and his lawyers argue that his arrest and detainment violate his constitutional rights to free speech and due process.

Khalil’s wife, who was present at the time of his arrest, is eight months pregnant and unsure if he will be present for the birth of their child.

His full unedited statement reads as follows:

My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.

Who has the right to have rights? 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.

Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities..........more.....