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Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist who organized pro-Hamas demonstrations at Columbia University, is now referring to himself as a “political prisoner” following his detention by immigration authorities.

Speaking from an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, where he faces potential revocation of his permanent residency, Khalil expressed grievances about the conditions of his confinement and what he perceives as systemic injustice.

“I am a political prisoner,” he declared in a widely circulated online statement.

“I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where 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.”

In his statement, Khalil accused the Trump administration of targeting him as part of a broader campaign to suppress dissenting voices, suggesting that individuals of all immigration statuses could face similar consequences for their political beliefs.

He further stated: “My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night.

With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.

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.

It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.

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

During his time at Columbia University, where he enrolled as a graduate student in 2022, Khalil was instrumental in organizing controversial anti-Israel demonstrations that caused significant disruption on campus and raised concerns about Jewish students’ safety. At one such protest at Barnard College, demonstrators distributed materials from the “Hamas media office,” establishing a direct connection to Hamas, an organization designated as terrorist by the U.S. State Department.

Recent developments have raised additional questions about Khalil’s background, with The Gateway Pundit reporting potential connections to American and British intelligence agencies, including a claimed security clearance from British authorities.

Given these circumstances, Khalil’s departure from the United States appears imminent.