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Mahmoud Khalil Returns To Columbia After US Detention, Urges Students To Call Out Israel
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Mahmoud Khalil returned to Columbia University for the first time since his 2025 detention. He urged students to continue calling out Israel, saying activism is working.
5 outlets told this the same way.
Return to Columbia
Mahmoud Khalil returned to Columbia University for the first time since his arrest in 2025, telling students to keep calling out Israel as he marked his first visit since detention. Khalil, a 31-year-old Columbia graduate, said his appearance for an event on his new memoir, No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention, was a “victory,” and he accused university leadership of seeking “to erase me, to erase any Palestinian voices on campus”. Columbia spokespersons said the university is “committed to rigorous debate, inquiry, and respectful dialogue across differing perspectives,” and they added that “An invitation to speak does not signify university endorsement of a speaker’s views.”
Khalil also said he had been released from immigration custody on June 20, 2025, while the Trump administration continued to seek his deportation. Khalil framed his public role as a fight for speech, saying, “My fight is not only about whether I get to stay in this country,” and he added that it was about whether people “can speak their minds.”
Detention and campus protests
Khalil described his detention as part of a broader crackdown on pro-Palestinian student activism, saying he was arrested on March 8, 2025, and held for three months without criminal charge despite holding permanent US residency.
Khalil said the demonstrations at Columbia in 2024 included authorising the New York Police Department to clear protesters from the Manhattan campus, and he told AFP, “They chose brutality. They chose repression,”.
Columbia maintained at the time that the demonstrations presented a safety threat, and the university later reiterated that it supports faculty members organizing academic events.
Khalil said he had also accused the university of failing to protect him from harassment prior to his detention, and he returned to campus to discuss his memoir after his release.
Khalil credited Palestinian student advocacy with reshaping US politics, saying, “Also, we can see on the ground that we have more progressive candidates being elected into US Congress and positions of power,” and he pointed to Dr Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani.
Pressure, politics, and stakes
Khalil told AFP that the American public is “finally changing, is finally looking at the Palestinian as an equal human,” and he linked that shift to a generation of leaders questioning their views on Israel. Khalil said the Trump administration tried to “chill” free speech on Palestinian rights with his arrest, and he argued, “It was clear to me that this administration just wanted to make an example out of me, so people wouldn't speak out for Palestine.” Khalil also described the conditions of his detention, saying, “I never imagined that such cruelty is happening on US soil,” and he said he entered detention centers where “all my rights were left outside.”
Khalil said his fight includes personal normalcy, telling AFP, “A big part of my fight is like fighting for normalcy,” and he added, “To go back to being the young father who would go to the park with his son and wife, and no one would bother them.” Khalil returned to Columbia with a message that he framed as ongoing political pressure, telling students to keep calling out Israel as he discussed his memoir with about 100 people.