Over the past two days, the pressure had felt relentless. Friends kept sending me posts from online accounts calling for my arrest or deportation. It had started with a video of me at a demonstration at Barnard College, Columbia’s affiliate school, the previous week. Masked students were protesting in the library and Barnard had refused to negotiate with them unless they unmasked. When talks stalled, I stepped in to mediate. The same provocateurs who always lurked at protests filmed me there and posted shots online with inflammatory captions like “Khalil served as a key negotiator for the pro-Hamas encampment in the spring.”
Initially, I had dismissed the threats as part of the usual intimidation campaign meant to silence criticism of Israel’s actions, the kind of smear tactics I had grown to expect. I was a permanent resident, married to a U.S. citizen, and above all, I had done nothing wrong.
Similar threats had come before. At the encampment in April 2024, I served as a negotiator on behalf of student protesters. The New York Post, a pro-Israel, rightwing tabloid, published a piece naming me among “the extremist student leaders of the anti-Israel protest camp bringing Columbia to its knees.” The article was mostly background information pulled from my LinkedIn profile, with a focus that I had been employed by [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees]. The article made sure to mention the now-debunked claim that UNRWA was connected to Hamas. When I read it, I contacted the newspaper to correct the record. I had done an internship at UNRWA as part of my degree at Columbia. They never responded. I told myself it didn’t matter.
Later that summer, an account linked to a Columbia group created a profile of me, similar in tone to the Post piece but with a focus on my immigration status and foreign nationality. After Donald Trump’s election, these kinds of posts grew more vicious. Both the President and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had vowed to deport protesters.
After the Barnard video went up, the sheer volume of accounts calling for my deportation was unlike anything I had seen before. The language was always the same: I was a pro-terror, pro-Hamas, anti-American protest leader. A few of the posts tagged Rubio, the White House, or the Department of Homeland Security, demanding my arrest.
For most of that week, I couldn’t sleep. I read every “Know Your Rights” guide I could find online. I studied every piece of information about encounters with the New York City Police Department and FBI: what to say, what not to say, when to stay silent, when to ask for a lawyer, when to plead the Fifth or invoke the Fourth Amendment (even if you have no idea what these are). But I skimmed the section on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I was a legal resident. ICE wouldn’t be coming for me.
Know Your Rights was a concept I first became aware of at Columbia. Students on campus held teach-ins, practiced scenarios, organized jail support, and handed out cards with lawyers’ phone numbers. I never attended any of those sessions. I still can’t figure out why. Maybe the whole idea simply felt foreign to me, not just unfamiliar but almost naive. In [Bashar al-]Assad’s Syria, there was no such thing as legal rights. When they wanted you, they took you. No warrant, no lawyer, no phone call. You disappeared, and if you were lucky, someone might find out where they had taken you.
I had spent my whole life knowing this: The state is not above the law, the state is the law. And now here I was, staying up until dawn, memorizing scripts for a country that promised something different. Noor was also aware of the smears and threats. How could I tell her it might be serious without alarming her? The last thing I wanted was to add fear to the weight she was carrying. And we had a rule, unspoken but understood: If I was worried, it was serious. It’s hard to rattle me; I’m notoriously calm about things that would alarm most people. So if I showed concern, she would know.
I wrestled with the question until the night before that iftar meal. At five that Saturday morning, we had suhoor, the light meal Muslims eat at dawn before the fast begins. We had labneh, cucumber, avocado, and oranges. Noor had been craving oranges throughout the pregnancy. The apartment was quiet, holding the particular silence of 5 a.m., the distant rumble of the 1 train on 125th and Broadway. We were lying back in bed, the room still dark. Finally, I said it: “Would you know what to do if I got arrested?”
I went over who to contact, what to say, what my rights were, or what I thought they were. She asked if she should be worried. I told her, “No, not at all, but you never know.” I tried to push through it quickly. She went back to sleep. I stayed awake.
I debated whether to send an email to Columbia, to the president’s office. I knew they would ignore it, just as they had ignored the other emails we had sent on behalf of Palestinian students. I had written to the president a few months earlier, in late January, during another wave of threats. The university never responded. I didn’t expect them to respond now, but I wanted it on the record. I wrote at six that morning, March 8:
Interim President Armstrong,
Since yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign . . . that [has] falsely labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation. Their attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats. I have outlined the wider context below, yet Columbia has not provided any meaningful support or resources in response to this escalating threat.
I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.
Mahmoud
After the iftar meal, as I climbed the steps of our building at 195 Claremont Avenue, holding Noor’s hand and planning what remained of our night, I glanced at the Expat, its windows fogged from the crowd inside, and laughed to myself. We were fine. I had been anxious for nothing. I opened the entrance door. The warmth of the lobby hit us, that familiar smell of old radiator heat. A man in plain clothes slipped in behind us before the door could close and asked, “Are you Mahmoud Khalil?”
Before I could answer, another man followed him in. He was in his late forties, visibly on edge, like he wanted to get this done and over with. This was the type of cop who makes you feel like a threat before you’ve even done anything. I later learned that this officer, an immigrant himself, had been honored by Trump in 2019 at the State of the Union address.
When I asked who they were, they said they were from the police and later clarified that they are from Homeland Security Investigations. They claimed my student visa had been canceled.
I laughed. “I don’t have a student visa.” It’s really happening, was the thought that came to me. But even as it surfaced, I pushed the words away. I asked to see their badges, an arrest warrant, their names, but they gave me no answers. That’s what the Know Your Rights guide had said to do: Ask questions, assert your rights, document everything. I was trying to understand what was going on, but they wouldn’t explain. I wanted Noor to film what was happening but they told her to leave. She refused and raised her phone. Then they threatened to arrest her.
The first man was wearing a Marvel T-shirt, a detail that stayed with me. I kept thinking it was absurd that I was supposed to trust I wasn’t being kidnapped when the man detaining me was dressed in a Marvel cartoon T-shirt. When none of them would show a badge or a warrant or even say their names.
“He has a green card,” Noor told them. The officer looked confused, caught off guard, as if this detail didn’t fit the script he had been given. Three more men appeared. They had been waiting there the whole time, somewhere past the lobby. Five of them now, in the closed lobby, around me.
The situation felt serious enough that I thought a lawyer was needed. I pulled out my phone and told them I was calling my lawyer. They didn’t object. I phoned Amy. She had been working with me for the past four months, contesting Columbia University’s disciplinary proceedings against students involved in campus protest. Columbia had created a new office that gave senior administrators unilateral control over student discipline, bypassing the usual faculty-student review board. In practice, it had become a mechanism to persecute pro-Palestinian students. I told Amy I was in the lobby, surrounded by DHS who were claiming my student visa was revoked. She asked to speak to them. I handed the phone to the Marvel-shirt officer. He grew irritated, talked to her quickly, just repeating what he had told me. When Amy asked for a warrant, he hung up on her.
Noor had run up to the apartment to get my green card. She was gone for less than five minutes. There was a bench by the mailboxes, and before I sat, the officers patted me down, hands moving quickly along my sides. They asked how I had gotten my green card. I told them it was through my wife. Part of me believed I could talk my way through this. Part of me thought there had been some administrative mistake and that at any moment they would realize it.
I was more worried about Noor than myself. Heavily pregnant, Noor didn’t need any more stress. She didn’t need to witness whatever was happening here.
She came back with the green card. The officer took it from her hand, checked it, and then called someone. He scratched his head while he waited for an answer. Someone picked up.
“He has a green card,” he said. “It’s in my hand.”
“Bring him anyway.” Suddenly, he raised his voice. “Turn your back. You are going to be under arrest.”
I asked again for a warrant. He didn’t bother to answer.
Now I gave Noor my phone and asked her to film them. This time they did not object. They pulled my arms behind my back and cuffed me. I said that there was no need for this—I would just walk out with them. They ignored me.
Excerpted from No Land To Stand On: Notes From Detention by Mahmoud Khalil. From Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 2026. Reprinted with permission.
