A Columbia University student and green card holder arrested by U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York City over his involvement in the pro-Palestinian campus protests made his first public remarks since being taken into custody earlier this month, in which he described himself as a “political prisoner.”
In his letter dictated by phone from a detention facility in Louisiana, Mahmoud Khalil said that his only concern at the time of his March 8 arrest was for the safety of his wife, Noor Abdalla, who was then about eight months pregnant.
“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.”
Khalil said he slept on a “cold floor” at an ICE field office in Lower Manhattan, before being transferred to the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he “slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.”
“The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent,” Khalil said. “Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.”
The statement comes as Khalil’s attorneys and the Justice Department spar in court over the Trump administration’s decision to send him halfway across the country to an immigration lockup in Louisiana.
The government said he could not be detained at the detention center in Elizabeth, in part, because of a bedbug infestation, so they sent him to Louisiana. In court filings, Khalil said there was no such discussion of bedbugs and he feared he was being immediately deported.
Khalil said in a declaration filed in Manhattan federal court Monday that while he was held overnight at a detention center in Elizabeth, “I did not hear anyone mention bedbugs.”
In a statement provided Tuesday evening to CBS News, Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, the company which manages the Elizabeth Detention Center, confirmed that a bedbug issue at the center was “recently discovered.”
“When Elizabeth Detention Center (EDC) staff recently discovered evidence of bedbugs at the facility, we immediately implemented a plan, with the approval and coordination of our partners at ICE, to determine the extent of the issue and eradicate any infestation,” Gustin said.
CoreCivic did not say exactly when the bedbug discovery was made, or how many detainees were impacted. Gustin emphasized that CoreCivic does not have a say in the placement, release or deportation of individual detainees.
Despite the bedbug claim, the Elizabeth Detention Center accepted at least four individuals for detention from March 6 through last Thursday and Khalil himself saw men being processed for detention while he was there, they wrote.
In court papers over the weekend, lawyers for the Justice Department also blamed his move to Louisiana on overcrowded facilities in the Northeast.
Khalil made the statement about bedbugs in an exhibit attached to court papers in which his lawyers asked that he be freed on bail while the courts decide whether his arrest violated the First Amendment.
The lawyers have also asked a judge to widen the effect of any order to stop the U.S. government from “arresting, detaining, and removing noncitizens who engage in constitutionally protected expressive activity in the United States in support of Palestinian rights or critical of Israel.”
In his declaration, Khalil said he was put in a van when he was taken away from the Elizabeth facility and he asked if he was being returned to FBI headquarters in Manhattan, where he was taken immediately after his arrest.
“I was told, ‘no, we are going to JFK Airport.’ I was afraid they were trying to deport me,” he recalled.
Of his time spent at the Elizabeth facility, he wrote in the court filings: “I was in a waiting room with about ten other people. We slept on the ground. Even though it was cold inside the room, there were no beds, mattresses, or blankets.”
In the weekend court papers, lawyers for the Justice Department gave a detailed description of Khalil’s March 8 arrest and his transport from Manhattan to Elizabeth and then to Kennedy International Airport in New York the next day for his transfer to Louisiana, where he has been held since.
“Khalil could not be housed at Elizabeth Detention Facility long-term due to a bedbug issue, so he remained there until his flight to Louisiana,” the lawyers wrote. They said he was at the facility from 2:20 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. on March 9.
The federal lawyers have asked that legal issues be addressed by federal judges in New Jersey or Louisiana rather than New York. A Manhattan federal judge has not yet ruled on the request.
Khalil’s lawyers, who oppose transferring the case, wrote in a submission Monday that the transfer to Louisiana was “predetermined and carried out for improper motives” rather than because of the bedbug infestation.
In his dictated letter, Khalil said: “Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.”
