Mahmoud Khalil's memoir Detention and legal fight

May 15, 2011

In this complete interview and opening preview, Mahmoud Khalil discusses his newly released memoir No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention. The hosts show his wife's video of his March 8, 2025 arrest in Columbia housing and recall his transfer to Louisiana, 104 days in ICE custody, exclusion from his son Deen's birth and June release. Khalil interprets the targeting as an effort to chill Palestine advocacy and describes family displacement, being shot by Israeli soldiers during a 2011 border march, and fleeing to Lebanon after Assad's forces abducted two friends on January 9, 2013. He criticizes the Board of Immigration Appeals' refusal to reopen his case, alleging bias and political intervention, and describes a planned October 19 Supreme Court petition; it has not yet been filed in the account. He explains his civil-rights suits against Columbia and against federal officials and private groups, citing his unanswered plea to interim president Katrina Armstrong, alleged doxing, institutional anti-Palestinian discrimination, surveillance, police actions and student expulsions. He calls Heritage's 2024 Project Esther a blueprint for suppression and cites a Massachusetts judge's finding about targeting noncitizen advocates, without naming or dating that ruling. He describes the emotional cost of missing Deen's birth, other detainees' family separation, poor detention conditions and his own weight loss. His report that a fellow detainee identified only as Alexander was killed after deportation to Honduras remains attributed, with identity and date unresolved. The hosts close with his book and forthcoming tour stops. Allegations, interpretations and future litigation plans are preserved as such.

Khalil says he joined thousands of Palestinians marching toward Palestine's border in 2011 amid the Arab Spring and was shot by Israeli soldiers while trying to cross. He describes the march as peaceful. His firsthand retrospective account is distinct from later relief organizing and flight from Syria.