MAHMOUD KHALIL, the former Columbia University student and Palestinian activist who, on March 8, was abruptly arrested and transported to a detention facility in Louisiana, has spoken out for the first time since his ordeal began.

On Tuesday, in a letter dictated over the phone, Khalil described the horrors he has been witnessing daily since being sent to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Louisiana after being unaccounted for in the immediate aftermath of his arrest. So far he has faced no charges.

Describing himself as “a political prisoner,” Khalil said that “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,” Khalil said.

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

Khalil was a prominent spokesperson during the Columbia student encampment in support of a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the US arming of Israel and its genocide against the Palestinian people. The students also called on their university to divest from Israel and the companies that support it.

As a green card holder, Khalil is a permanent legal resident of the United States. His wife Noor, who is eight months pregnant, is a US citizen, but was also threatened with arrest at the time her husband was seized.

After his arrest in New York, Khalil was briefly detained in New Jersey before being moved to Louisiana. But on Wednesday a judge ruled that Khalil must be returned to New Jersey where the case filed there, and challenging his unlawful detention by ICE, will now be heard.

It is a reprieve of sorts, given Louisiana is home to one of the most conservative courts in the country, although Khalil’s lawyers were hoping to have their case heard in the even more liberal New York court.

An earlier ruling forbidding the deportation of Khalil, a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Syria, remains in place.

Khalil criticised the Biden and now Trump administrations for perpetuating a culture of “anti-Palestinian racism” demonstrated by their continued funnelling of lethal weapons to Israel. But some of his strongest accusations were reserved for the leadership at Columbia University who, he said, aided and abetted authorities to enable his arrest.

“Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticising Israel,” read Khalil’s letter. “Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their BA degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of Student Workers of Columbia president Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.”

Miner, who is Jewish, was the head of the Student Workers of Columbia/United Auto Workers (UAW) at Columbia and a PhD student there. He was fired from his union position and expelled from the university, drawing an angry response from the UAW.

“The shocking move is part of a wave of crackdowns on free speech against students and workers who have spoken out and protested for peace and against the war on Gaza,” a UAW statement said.

“It is no accident that this comes days after the federal government froze Columbia’s funding, and threatened to pull funding from 60 other universities across the country,” the statement continued. “It is no accident that this firing has occurred the day before contract negotiations begin.”

Columbia University is facing the cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts for what the Trump administration has described as the university’s “failure to protect students and faculty from anti-semitic violence and harassment.”

But on March 11, at least two thousand Jewish professors, staff, and students from universities across the US including many from Columbia circulated a letter decrying Khalil’s arrest.

“We hold various views about Israel and Palestine, politics in the Middle East, and student activism on our campus,” the signatories wrote. “But we are united in denouncing, without equivocation, anyone who invokes our name—and cynical claims of anti-semitism—to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities.”

Khalil’s ordeal has just begun, but he fears that even if he is the first, he will not be alone for long.

“The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent,” he wrote in his letter. “Visa holders, green card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.”

Khalil has always been quick to point out that his suffering is minimal compared to that endured by his people in Gaza. Nevertheless, he ended his letter:  “Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.