On Saturday, June 21, Mahmoud Khalil landed at Newark Liberty International Airport. For 104 days, the US permanent resident had been held by the US government. Most of that time was spent at a private immigration detention facility in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil had missed the birth of his son. And initially, the Trump administration had tried to deny Khalil contact visits with his newborn. It took the intervention of a federal judge for Khalil to be allowed to hold his son while detained. When he landed in Newark, Khalil, now free, was reunited with both his wife and son.
Since his arrest in March, Khalil has come to symbolize the Trump administration’s war on free speech. The Trump administration clearly enacted a policy of arresting, detaining, and seeking to deport noncitizens who dared to criticize Israel or defend the Palestinian people’s basic rights. Khalil was not the only person caught up in this McCarthyite dragnet, but he was one of the first. And he became perhaps the most high-profile political prisoner of the current crackdown.
In spite of intense interest in Khalil’s case and public support, up until Friday of last week Khalil was subjected to exceptional treatment. While nearly every other similarly situated individual was granted bail, Khalil continued to languish in immigration detention. That was until June 20, when US District Judge Michael E. Farbiarz finally granted the former Columbia graduate student bail.
The prolonged detention and ongoing attempted deportation of Khalil was clearly meant to silence those who dissent from the United States’ full-throated backing of Israel. Yet the newly freed Khalil has shown that the attempts to silence him have failed. Upon landing at the airport in Newark, he joined his…
Auteur: Chip Gibbons
