The wife of detained Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil announced the birth of the couple’s son Monday, noting her husband was not able to witness the event.
Dr. Noor Abdalla, a Michigan-born dentist who was with Khalil when federal agents arrested him on March 8, said she requested his presence at the birth but was denied by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Despite our request for ICE to allow Mahmoud to attend the birth, they denied his temporary release to meet our son,” Abdalla said in a statement Monday afternoon. “This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer.”
A spokesperson for the couple did not immediately respond to questions about the baby’s name.
“ICE’s cruelty is boundless,” Baher Azmy, an attorney of Khalil’s, said in an emailed statement. “It’s small-minded refusal to grant Mahmoud and Noor the most basic human gesture, to care for each other in this pivotal life moment, is an extension of their vindictive and arbitrary decision to arrest and attempt to deport him.”
In emails reviewed by NBC News, Khalil’s attorneys reached out to ICE’s New Orleans Field Office on Sunday, requesting his temporary release to attend the birth of his child.
His attorneys requested Khalil be released for two weeks, adding that his wife had gone into labor Sunday morning in New York City, eight days earlier than expected, according to the emails.
“A two week furlough in this civil detention matter would be both reasonable and humane so that both parents can be present for the birth of their first child,” his attorneys wrote.
Khalil was “open to any combination of conditions” that would have allowed him to be released, including a “GPS ankle monitor and/or scheduled check-ins,” his attorneys said.
Around 30 minutes later, Melissa B. Harper, the director of ICE’s New Orleans field office, replied: “After consideration of the submitted information and a review of your client’s case, your request for furlough is denied,” she wrote.
Khalil, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and was granted permanent U.S. resident status last year, became a figurehead amid pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last year, when he served as a mediator between student groups participating in a campus encampment and administrators at the New York City school.
U.S. agents, including one from Homeland Security Investigations, arrested Khalil at his home at a student housing complex on campus. He was detained as he returned from iftar, a meal that breaks the traditional Islamic fast during the holy month of Ramadan, Abdalla has said.
“Despite seeing the green card, they insisted that they would be bringing him in anyway,” Abdalla said in a court filing challenging Khalil’s arrest and no-bail status.
The legal rationale for Khalil’s detention didn’t become entirely clear until three days later, when the State Department said in a statement that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has the discretion, under a rarely used federal law, to remove any noncitizen deemed to “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
Federal authorities also later alleged that Khalil lied on his application for permanent residency, a deportable offense. That claim relies on unverified tabloid reports — some of which were published after he submitted his paperwork for residency — and mischaracterizations of his work and activism, according to an NBC News review of evidence filed in the case.
An immigration judge in Louisiana ruled this month that Rubio has the discretion to deport Khalil and that efforts to do so may move forward. Khalil’s lawyers are challenging the ruling, which has a deadline of Wednesday before it goes into effect, and have separately filed an appeal of his arrest in federal criminal court in New Jersey.
“Mahmoud remains unjustly detained in an ICE detention center over 1,000 miles away from his firstborn child,” Abdalla said in her statement Monday. “My son and I should not be navigating his first days on earth without Mahmoud. ICE and the Trump administration have stolen these precious moments from our family in an attempt to silence Mahmoud’s support for Palestinian freedom.”
His lawyers argue Khalil was arrested over his protected free speech and his role in last year’s pro-Palestinian student protest movement.
Rubio said last month that the State Department has revoked the student visas of campus protesters he characterized as “lunatics.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Khalil of making Jewish students fearful while supporting terrorists. She said after his arrest that he “hates the United States and what we stand for.”
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, echoed those sentiments in an emailed reply Tuesday to a request for comment about ICE denying Khalil’s release to attend his son’s birth.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America,” she said. “When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, take over buildings and deface property, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”
Khalil’s lawyers have presented evidence that he welcomed the help of Jewish protesters during last year’s protests, and they have denied he ever provided support to Hamas or any other terrorist organization.
