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This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

Across the 2024 election, Donald Trump and the people behind him said again and again that they were here to restore free speech to this country. Then they got power. And his administration came after speech in a way that the left never dared to do — never wanted to do.

You saw it with the hunt to cancel any grant that had the word “diversity” anywhere near it. You saw it as countless organizations that depended on — or feared — the government began reworking their mission statements or censoring their websites to avoid any words that might offend anyone in this administration. You saw it as border agents looked through travelers’ phones to see if they had said anything that the administration wouldn’t like. And you saw it as immigration agents begin yanking people off the streets — for the crime of nothing more than speech.

Among the first of these people was Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia who had been a leader in the school’s anti-Israel protests.

Khalil is a green-card holder. He’s married to a U.S. citizen. His sole offense had been to speak out against Israel in a way this administration did not like. He was detained under the U.S. secretary of state’s authority to cancel the residency of noncitizens who threaten U.S. foreign policy.

Did this grad student at Columbia actually threaten U.S. foreign policy? Is that how fragile our foreign policy is?

No one really believed that.

Khalil was not followed into his building by plainclothes officers and taken to an ICE detention center in Louisiana for more than a hundred days — imprisoned there while his wife gave birth — because the U.S. government feared him. He was imprisoned there because the U.S. government wanted others like him to fear them. It wanted noncitizens and immigrants to stop speaking out.

It wanted everyone to ask: If they could do this to Khalil, could they do it to me? If they could detain him on such flimsy grounds, could they not come up with a reason to detain me?

Khalil is out now on bail. He is still speaking. So I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Ezra Klein: Mahmoud Khalil, welcome to the show.

Mahmoud Khalil: Thank you for having me, Ezra.

So let’s start at the beginning. Tell me a bit about yourself. Where were you born?

I was born in a very small Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus, called Khan Eshieh. I wouldn’t say it’s a poor neighborhood — but middle class, lower-middle class.

What did your parents do?

My parents are now in Europe, but in Syria, they were both civil servants. My mom was working in a civil office, issuing passports, I.D.s, to people. My dad was a welder working in a state company.

Doing metalwork?

Yes.

What did they want for you? When you were growing up, what did they hope your adulthood would look like?

Both my parents really wanted us to be educated and invested a lot in our education, especially since my dad barely made it to middle school. My mom only had high school.

When you’re Palestinian in Syria, when you don’t have any property, there’s nothing in terms of family wealth. So education is our main investment. My parents would rather us get educated than actually get food at some point.

What were you told about your family’s history in Palestine growing up? How was that identity formed for you?

What I know about Palestine, I heard from my grandmother, who spent 30 years in Palestine, in Tiberias. Actually, my grandmother would always tell me that they had Jewish neighbors and she would work on their farm. So we had a sense that there was coexistence.

My grandparents were exiled from Palestine in 1948. My grandmother, when she left Palestine, was pregnant with my uncle, and she had to give birth en route to southern Damascus.

So we had that sense of injustice, that sense that Palestine was taken from us, was stolen from us. The camp is just about 30, 40 miles away from the borders. You can see the impact of the Nakba, the Palestinian exile from Palestine, around you because everyone is talking about it. And we grew up in an environment where we longed to go back. That’s why they lived literally in just a normal tent for a number of years before upgrading it to a mud house. And then they decided to build a concrete house.

Living in the camps, to Palestinians, is always temporary. It’s a station until we go back to Palestine.

You grew up in Syria, and you had to flee during the uprising. Tell me about that moment. What leads to you deciding you have to leave?

The Syrian people erupted against the autocracy in Syria, against the Syrian regime.

I was part of that. Palestinians were also oppressed by the Syrian regime. And, as a result of that, I was part of organizing protests, relief to displaced persons.

But on Jan. 11, 2013, two of my friends were disappeared, arbitrarily detained, and I had to flee the next day. And these two friends died under torture.

How did you become involved in organizing the Syrian protests? That’s a dangerous thing to do. You’re how old?

I was 16 at that point. Palestinian refugees, at the very beginning, were isolated from the big protests.

A lot of displaced persons — Syrians — would come to the camp, would come to our schools. So we opened our schools, and we started a whole relief operation for them. We felt that we needed to speak up, we needed to protect those who are fleeing from the areas that the regime is targeting.

With a very small group of friends, we started to organize small protests. And by a small protest, I mean it would last for five, 10 minutes because you feared that the mukhabarat or the military would come after you.

The risk of protesting in Syria was your life. It was not an arrest. It was not a revocation of your degree. It was literally death.

It was a week after my 18th birthday that I left to Lebanon.

So when you realized you’re in danger, when two of your friends had been disappeared and within a day, you’re in Lebanon — did you already have an exit plan?

Did you just get in a car and drive? How does that happen for you?

I learned about the disappearance of my friends, and at that point, I feared that, under torture, they would confess my name. Or if they had anything on their computer about me, I feared that I would be next.

I feared that my name was already with the regime. So literally, that same day I went to Lebanon.

In a car? Did you walk?

In a car. In Syria, the security branches are very decentralized. So I wanted to make it as soon as possible to the border so that my name was not on a list of people who cannot leave Syria.

I had some relatives in Lebanon, so I spent a couple of weeks there. But I eventually ended up in the Shatila refugee camp, which is one of the biggest Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

I wanted to continue my education, but I did not speak any English. Most of the universities in Lebanon are either English or French, and they’re very expensive. They had no money whatsoever.

So I started working in construction just to make a living. Then I saw the opportunity to volunteer with a Syrian-American organization called Jusoor, providing education opportunities for Syrians around the world.

I volunteered there, and then two weeks later they offered me a job. That was my first job — $600 a month. A few months after that, they offered me a scholarship to go to university in Lebanon to study computer science. I worked with them for five years. I was doing my undergraduate part-time, working full-time.

Then I joined the British Embassy as a program manager and political officer in their Syria office.

So you taught yourself English during this period?

Yes.

How?

Because Jusoor is a Syrian-American organization, we had a lot of American volunteers. So I would just talk with them. I would communicate with them. Not with words — like very broken English. It took me, I would say, until 2017 until I felt confident in my English. It wasn’t an easy process.

What made you want to work with the British government?

Supporting Syrians. I worked in the Syria office. Their policy regarding Syria aligns with my values, aligns with how I see the political solution in Syria. I wanted to have that insight and make a contribution in that process.

It also aligned with my career aspirations in terms of working in diplomacy and international affairs, as a whole.

What made you want to study in the United States?

In Lebanon, I studied computer science. However, my career took a different path, into international affairs and development. I wanted to have an opportunity to actually study international affairs academically rather than just learning that by doing — to actually spend some time looking into theories, looking into the academic part of the work that I’d been doing for the past 10 years at that point.

In 2018, I got a scholarship to study an executive course at Columbia in nonprofit management and leadership at the business school. So I came here just for a couple of weeks. I liked Columbia, and Columbia is known in the Palestinian circles because of Edward Said, the Palestinian-American academic and writer.

I had heard a lot about Columbia, so I was like: Yes, Columbia in New York, right next to the U.N., where I eventually want to work. So why not?

What’s your general impression of America? How do you think about America as an entity, as a country?

The fact that I worked for this Syrian-American organization gave me a lot of insight into America being a country of opportunity, a country at least of democracy, of rule of law.

However, I had my own reservations about the impact of America on me, because as a Palestinian or as a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, America’s influence in the Middle East was very negative. So I felt that impact on me as a Palestinian.

However, working for the British Embassy, I would always meet American diplomats, because the British and the U.S. policy goals regarding Syria were quite similar. So I would spend a lot of time with American diplomats discussing Syria.

The most important thing I liked about the U.S. is the quality of education. So that is what actually encouraged me to come to the United States, as well.

What year is this?

The first time I applied to Columbia was in 2020. I got accepted, but I couldn’t come because of Covid. So I came to the United States in 2022.

Before Oct. 7, how was that first year for you? What was Columbia like for you?

I was very much looking forward to starting my degree at Columbia University. I wanted to take a full load of courses. I wanted to have that two years to decide if I wanted to continue working in diplomacy or whether I should shift to the private sector.

However, that was disturbed by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, when over 50,000 people died. So I continued. I wanted also to be involved in as many communities as possible. Being my first time living in the country, I wanted to have friends. I joined the Middle East and North Africa Club. I joined the Palestine Working Group. Just to build community. Because in a city as big as New York, you need a community.

It’s a hard place to get a foothold.

Exactly. However, the anti-Palestinian sentiment at Columbia was very obvious. One of the first events we organized as part of the Palestine Working Group at Columbia was inviting the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch to talk about Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian territories.

And I was surprised that our event was flagged as a special event. I was like: Why is that? We are inviting someone from Human Rights Watch.

So I was very surprised that this event was flagged as a special event. That’s even before Oct. 7. That was, I think, April 2023.

Another event — inviting the B.D.S., the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, coordinator to come to talk to us virtually — was also flagged as a special event. We had to fight with the administration to make it happen.

So clearly there was this anti-Palestinian sentiment, and that was my first shock at Columbia. It felt to me like: OK, maybe it’s bureaucratic. It’s not a big deal. But it was more obvious after Oct. 7 — the fact that the anti-Palestinian prejudice within the Columbia administration is very flagrant.

Tell me about that for a minute before we get to Oct. 7 itself, because Columbia now has these dual reputations you’re describing: It has a board of trustees that was, I think it’s fair to say, very concerned about things like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. It’s also a home of a lot of very important Palestinian scholarship. Rashid Khalidi is there at this time. There’s this question of whether it’s an antisemitic place. There’s some kind of tension here that is specific about Columbia.

Columbia is a for-profit place. Columbia doesn’t care about Jewish students, doesn’t care about Palestinian students. They only care about their brand and money.

So it’s a corporation, functionally.

Absolutely.

Oct. 7 happens. What do you think that day?

At that day, I was at the cinema with my wife, Noor, at Lincoln Center. When I left the cinema around midnight, 12:30 a.m., I started to receive all these notifications.

To me, it felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle. I remember I didn’t sleep for a number of days, and Noor was very worried about my health. It was heavy. I still remember. I was like: This couldn’t happen.

What do you mean we had to reach this moment? What moment is this?

I was interning at UNRWA at that point — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — at the U.N.’s New York office. As part of my internship, my research and work were focused on Palestine, on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza.

You can see that the situation is not sustainable. You have an Israeli government that’s absolutely ignoring Palestinians. They are trying to make that deal with Saudi and just happy about their Abraham Accord without looking at Palestinians — as if Palestinians are not part of the equation. They circumvented the Palestinian question.

It was clear that it was becoming more and more violent. By Oct. 6, over 200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers. Over 40 of them were children.

So that’s what I mean by: Unfortunately, we couldn’t avoid such a moment.

It was absolutely difficult to see not only the horrific images but also the response of Israel. Because I knew that’s what Netanyahu wants because Netanyahu thrives on the killing of Palestinians. At that point, there were already big demonstrations in Israel regarding the judicial reforms. But I knew that was something that Netanyahu would use to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.

When you say you have these days where you’re not sleeping — are you just following the news and the social media relentlessly? Are you trying to think about what will happen next? Are you trying to think about how this will play out?

Yes, mostly just thinking about the future, to be honest — worried about the future. I remember one of the things I said: This is going to be even worse than the Nakba, the aftermath. I had to think: How can you stop this? What can we do?

But also just following — a day or two days after when the former Israeli defense minister said: We’re going to cut everything from Gaza, “human animals” — all of that.

So the intent was clear that they wanted to obliterate Gaza.

I remember I did a piece right after Oct. 7, and one of the things that seemed clear to me very, very quickly on that day — as you’re watching the images, you’re hearing the screams, you’re seeing the videos of Jewish Israelis being paraded around, of corpses — is both that this attack is horrific and that the counterattack is going to be overwhelming.

On some level, I understood that as something Hamas must have wanted. Pull Israel into this attack, pull it into some kind of war. Maybe you involve other players in the Middle East. But a lot of lives are being used there as chips on the table.

Was that your perception? Or did you see this as something that needed to happen to break the equilibrium?

It’s more the latter — just to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard. And to me, it’s a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here, that Palestinians are part of the equation. That was my interpretation of why Hamas did the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.

Because at that point, there was no political process. It was clear that the Saudi-Israel deal is very imminent, and Palestinians wouldn’t have any path to statehood and self-determination. So they had to do that, according to their calculations — which, it’s obvious, were not right.

I’ve heard you in other news be very clear about condemning the killing of civilians. Oct. 7 was obviously an operation that did target and kill a lot of civilians. Do you see that as unavoidable, that Hamas had no other choice? Do you see it as a mistake?

What I know is that targeting civilians is wrong. That’s why we’ve been calling for an international independent investigation to hold perpetrators to accountability. It’s very important, for those of us who believe in international law, that this should happen.

And it’s very important to underscore, as well, that Palestinians have tried all forms of resistance — including nonviolent resistance. However, this was always targeted by Israel. Palestinians who participated in the Great March of Return were killed or maimed because of that.

There’s nothing that can justify the killing of civilians — and the international law is very clear about that. We cannot pick and choose when international law applies to us or to others.

But also, there’s another point to this, Ezra: Palestinians don’t have to be perfect victims. That’s what the world is asking of Palestinians amid the dispossession, the occupation, the killing, all of that. Horrible things happened. Nothing can justify that. I would do everything in my power to stop that from happening.

But we cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims after 75 years of dispossession, of killing people in Gaza, being under siege — at that point for over 17 years. Palestinians in the West Bank being stopped at checkpoints, settlers attacking them at every opportunity. The human dignity of Palestinians was absent — and still is, unfortunately.

So that’s why, when discussing this — unfortunately, these horrible things happened, but we cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims.

So tell me about the organizing for you. How do you get involved? When do the protests and the encampments begin? What is your initial involvement in them?

It goes back before Oct. 7, my involvement in Palestine organizing on campus. I started the process with the Columbia administration creating Dar, which means “home” in Arabic. It’s the Palestinian student society, to bring Palestinians from different schools together — that was the goal of it.

I worked with the administration over the summer to build that society. That positioned me, by Oct. 7, to be the co-president of this new society, but I was also a co-president of the Palestine Working Group at SIPA, the School of International and Public Affairs. So I had this relationship with the Columbia administration. Most of them were junior officers.

I’ve heard you describe yourself previously as a bureaucrat.

Yes.

And it sounds like you maintain some of that identity at Columbia — a person working within systems.

Yes. I mean, most of the students are young. They don’t have this experience through these bureaucratic systems.

So I found myself in a position where I would be the one communicating to the administration the concerns of the Palestinian community.

On Oct. 9 or 10, I sent Columbia an appeal from the Palestinian students regarding the one-sided narrative that Columbia was trying to push regarding academic accommodations for Palestinian students like myself, who had been awake for days, just watching the horrors.

When you say the one-sided narrative Columbia was pushing, what narrative and in what form?

The narrative that Columbia pushed from the very beginning was a very pro-Israel narrative. By Oct. 8, there were hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel. Yet Columbia erased that from their communication.

Our ask was very simple: Treat us equally, see us as humans. Yet that was met with opposition or just no answers whatsoever.

And the ask here would have meant in these communications being more —

Being more balanced in terms of acknowledging the Palestinian death, acknowledging the humanitarian crisis, acknowledging that Palestinians are occupied. You either should be consistent with these matters or just don’t say anything.

I guess the perspective of Israeli Jewish students at Columbia would be that there was a huge attack that murdered some 1,200 people — that they were afraid of antisemitic violence erupting around the world, and that they needed to hear something about that.

Again, what we asked is not to omit their suffering or their perspective. We wanted to have equality — as we want in the whole movement. This movement is about equality and justice.

Columbia did that without the students even asking for it. The first statement coming from Columbia was on the evening of Oct. 7.

So the whole set of communications felt like an erasure of Palestinian experience?

Absolutely. The whole of Columbia’s communication with the student body was designed to erase the Palestinian experience.

So at this point, you’re sending emails. At what point does this become the protest that later becomes very well known?

I must mention that the first protest that happened at Columbia was on Oct. 12 — five, six days after Oct. 7.

For these five days, every single night, there would be a vigil organized by Israeli and Jewish students at Columbia. Palestinians made a decision to not hold any vigils during these days, to give them the space to mourn.

When we wanted to have our protest on Oct. 12, we were met with a counterprotest. Columbia made the mistake of putting these protests facing each other.

So the university decides where you can be —

Exactly. They gave the students supporting Palestine the East Lawn and students supporting Israel the West Lawn.

It’s like a metaphor.

Exactly. That was one of the first biggest mistakes that Columbia made.

The protesters literally took a lawn. They wanted to call for their university to do three things: to divest from companies complicit in human rights violations, to disclose the investments where Columbia money goes and to end ties with Israeli academic institutions.

The student movement at Columbia started — it’s not just after Oct. 7. I really want to highlight that in 2002, Columbia students voted to demand Columbia divest its investments from companies associated with or complicit in human rights violations in Israel.

And every year after that, the students would do the same. CUAD, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest, was not created after Oct. 7. It was created in 2016 as a partnership between Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. So this is not a new thing.

The student movement is not only about protests, encampments and civil disobedience. There’s a lot of work done in terms of political education, referendums, submitting proposals to Columbia on why they should divest, research, mutual aid. So it feels very hard when you hear that it’s only about the protest, and it’s only about the encampment.

However, the students wanted to continue protesting because Columbia was not listening to them whatsoever.

You described the groups you were in as Palestinian groups, but you mentioned a minute ago that Jewish Voices for Peace, which is also a student group, was involved from the beginning in these protests, too, and in the divestment movement.

Tell me about them, about your relationship with the Jewish students who are part of these protests. What is that set of relationships and dynamics like?

Having lived in the Middle East most of my life, unfortunately, the only Jew you hear about is the one who’s trying to kill you. For those in Gaza and the West Bank — that’s the only Jewish person they encounter: the one at checkpoints, the one raiding their homes.

And for me, because I was involved in this international work, I met a lot of Jews through my work. And coming into the United States, it was an opportunity for me to expand on that — to really understand what Israel means to the Jewish population around the world and the Jewish perspective about Israel.

Jewish Voices for Peace — and not only them, because there are a lot of Jewish students who are not associated with Jewish Voices for Peace, who were part of the movement, who felt that they can’t remain silent while a country is committing crimes in their names, who wanted to fight antisemitism by showing what real Judaism is, that their Judaism requires them to speak out. So they were absolutely an integral part of the movement.

You mentioned that the protests have these three demands: divestment from countries that have human rights abuses or international law abuses, the cutting of ties to Israeli universities and knowledge of where Columbia’s money is going.

The more macro demand, the thing you hear in chants, the thing that is behind more of that, is the idea of Palestinian liberation. Of freedom.

Absolutely.

What does that mean to you?

Palestinian liberation means that Palestinians should live in dignity, freedom and justice — as simple as that.

They did not have political goals in terms of one state or two states or what the form of governance would be for a liberated Palestine — I mean, I have views on that as a Palestinian — but the movement was just to end this occupation, to end the apartheid, to end the genocide now and to have justice, freedom and dignity for everyone.

I remember the Columbia protest — before I knew who you were — becoming a national story. And hearing about it constantly at every dinner I seemed to go to, and its being defined by positions that feel more extreme than that.

Famously a student saying — this got attributed to you, but it wasn’t you — that Zionists don’t deserve to live.

Some people hear “Palestinian liberation” and hear “Jewish eradication” or “expulsion.” Is that what you mean when you say it? Is that what you hear in the movement when you say it?

No, absolutely not.

There are deliberate attempts to demonize the movement. Again, the movement as a whole is not homogeneous, but also there is some ignorance in the movement in terms of what Palestinian liberation could mean. But in no way does it mean the eradication of the Jewish people.

This is part of the demonization of the movement — that if you get Palestinian rights, then you wouldn’t get Jewish rights.

To me — as a Palestinian, as an oppressed — I always felt my duty to also liberate my oppressor from their hate and from their fear.

But these were always just a distraction — sentiments about the movement that it’s violent, that it wants to eradicate Israel or the Jewish people. Because it’s not. We are at a time where Palestinians are getting killed every minute. That’s what the focus was — and still is.

You end up as a negotiator on behalf of the coalition of groups that are protesting. What is that role? Who are you negotiating with? What are you negotiating for?

Given my relationship with the Columbia administration and given my experience in diplomacy, the students and faculty approached me to negotiate on their behalf. And also, as a Palestinian, I can relate more to the demands.

So I was negotiating with two top administrators at Columbia. However, Columbia did not want to negotiate. They just wanted to buy time.

It was disheartening because these students were protesting since October. Every single week you have a protest. The students submitted proposals to Columbia’s committee on divestment, and the proposals were rejected.

When you have Columbia suspending S.J.P. and J.V.P. for the protests in November and then disciplining students for protests, then the students had to step up their game. Because clearly the university wouldn’t listen to them unless they escalated.

That’s how the encampment happened. They did not take us seriously at the beginning. Then they took us more seriously, but it was clear that they did not want in any way to criticize Israel. They did not in any way appear to be capitulating to the students.

It was very intense. I was threatened at the negotiation table. They told me: This is our offer. If you don’t sign, the police or National Guard will come today at midnight.

To uproot the encampments?

Yes. Exactly.

Many of the people protesting and the leaders of the protest would do so with their faces covered. You didn’t. Why?

I wasn’t doing anything wrong. That doesn’t mean that others were doing something wrong because they covered their faces. It means that my risk calculation is different — because the risk is real. Right after Oct. 7, there was doxxing — trucks displaying the faces of students.

These were trucks going around Columbia University —

Calling students a Jewish-hating group or Jewish-hating students, something like that. So students feared revealing their identity. Also there were groups like Canary Mission and Betar harassing these students and posting their information online, calling their parents, calling their employers.

There was this fear —

And you’re a target of these groups.

I was a target — I’m still a target — of these groups. But my risk appetite was higher than others’. Why would I hide my face for protesting a genocide? If an employer doesn’t want to employ me for my views on Palestine, then I don’t want to work there.

Well, was it your risk appetite? Or was it also a different risk assessment? We’re going to talk about your arrest and detention in a second, but did that not seem to you like a thing that happens in America?

Yes. I was ultimately wrong with that assessment. Because, once again, I wasn’t doing anything wrong to hide my face. And the focus of these groups was more mainly like employers, opportunities and smearing you online.

At no moment did I feel that there would actually be government collaboration with these groups. None of my statements were problematic. Not to mention, even if they were problematic, they would be covered by the First Amendment. But I did not feel that the government would actually act on such baseless claims against me.

I was wrong. Eventually the U.S. government depended on these profiles to target students.

So Donald Trump is inaugurated for a second term in January 2025. When he won the election, and when he was inaugurated, what did you think that meant, first, for the set of issues that you care about — the conflict, American policy? But also did you think it meant anything for you and other students in your movement personally? Did that seem like a likely outcome?

The election of Trump, when it comes to Palestine, unfortunately, is the same as Biden. Biden was equally bad.

Biden was gaslighting us that they care about Palestinians. But in fact, Biden laid the groundwork for Trump to do what he’s doing right now. It’s just to us, Trump would expose this hypocrisy.

So your view is that their policies were not that different — Trump was just honest about it.

Exactly. When it comes to actually using government resources to come after students to set the movement back — because one of Trump’s campaign pledges was to set the Palestine movement in this country back 20 years. I think that’s what he said in the summer of 2024.

But my view is that this only exposed that there is a Palestine exception in this country — when it comes to the First Amendment and when it comes to the U.S. government institutions.

In the early days of March, you reach out to Columbia University. You say that something is changing, that you’re feeling unsafe.

What were you seeing?

After the executive order by the Trump administration in January targeting student activists, these shady groups like Canary Mission and Betar became more emboldened. They were more vicious in their attacks online.

And the week leading to my arrest, I noticed that all my friends would text me these tweets from Canary Mission and these groups tagging Rubio, tagging D.H.S., ICE, all of that.

So I sent the Columbia administration a couple of emails, mainly asking for a lawyer to send these organizations a cease and desist letter.

Walk me through what happens on March 8.

On March 8, I was coming back from an iftar dinner with my wife, and I entered the lobby of my building. Then I noticed that someone was following us.

They asked me: Are you Mahmoud Khalil? And I was like: Yes, who are you?

They said: We are the police. I was like: What police? Because they were in plain clothes. There were two at that point. Then they said they were with the Department of Homeland Security and my visa had been revoked.

I said: I don’t have a visa. I’m not here on a visa. I’m a green card holder.

He looked very confused at that point, and he called in someone else. So at this point there were four people. I asked if they had any arrest warrant or anything to show me, and they refused to do that. They threatened Noor, my wife, with arrest if she didn’t leave.

So Noor went to get my green card because it wasn’t on me at that point. They were just confused about the green card part of this. And when Noor brought it, and they saw it, he looked even more confused.

So he had to call someone, and that someone told him: Bring him anyway.

During all that period, I was chill. I was very calm. I’ve dealt with power all my life. I knew I didn’t do anything wrong. I thought, given their first comment about the visa, maybe this is just a misunderstanding. I would go to the office, and it would be solved.

But I was very scared because they were wearing plain clothes. The cars were unmarked cars. I was taken to their office in New York, and five hours later they showed me that there would be a termination — that my presence in the United States presents, I think — I can’t remember. But it’s a foreign policy threat.

Here, I’ll read it. The provision here that they’re working off, the Trump administration, is: “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the secretary of state has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”

Exactly.

So they show you that?

After five hours. And I laughed when I saw it. I was like: What are they doing? Even the officer shrugged while giving me the N.T.A., the notice to appear.

But at the same time, I heard someone approaching the officer that the White House was requesting an update, and I requested endless times to call my lawyer.

I told him I want to talk to my lawyer before signing, just to know what’s happening. And they refused.

Then they moved me to New Jersey, then back to New York, to J.F.K., to Texas, to Louisiana — in a matter of 30 hours.

Wait, say that again? They moved you from J.F.K. —

To Texas.

To Texas —

To Louisiana.

In 30 hours?

In 30 hours. So everything was very quick, without me knowing where I’m going. I was shackled. And you’re expected to follow orders, so —

Had you been given a lawyer, an opportunity to call someone?

Nothing. Nothing at all. These practices were present in Syria, where you have a security branch kidnapping you from the street or disappearing you and arbitrarily detaining you.

I never felt that this would happen to me in the United States — where they would show up without any arrest warrant, without anything, and just take me.

That’s why I keep saying it felt like a kidnapping. Because from Saturday evening until Monday morning, I had no contact with anyone. No lawyers, no family, nothing.

The last thing I heard from them — when they were taking me to the car, they were threatening Noor with arrest. And she was eight months pregnant at that time. And that was the only thing I was thinking about during these 30 hours: Did they arrest Noor? Is the baby OK? Is she OK?

I wanted answers, but they refused to give any answers. And I was, again, shackled and expected to just follow orders.

I only knew that I was going to Louisiana when we were boarding the plane.

Tell me about what happens in Louisiana.

I didn’t know where I was going. Like, is it a jail? Is it an office? Is it a detention center for immigrants? I didn’t know any of that.

So when we arrived there, we arrived at 1 a.m. We get to the detention center, and they put me in this dorm with over 70 men.

In the morning, I learned that this is an ICE detention facility and that everyone here is undocumented or they are here because of their documents. I felt better because now I can talk to people and ask what’s happening. I can see there’s a phone.

So when I woke up, I went to ask someone how I can operate the phone, and I called Noor. I just wanted to know: Is she going to pick up? Not like: What’s happening in the outside world?

Noor picked up, and we talked, and the first thing she told me was: The White House has tweeted about you.

What did Trump say about you that day?

“Shalom Mahmoud.”

Right. I remember that tweet.

Yes. He later said a lot of things about my being a Hamas sympathizer. Rubio said: young aspiring terrorist. Or something like that.

It felt like within a couple of days, the media was painting a totally different image of who Mahmoud Khalil is. The dehumanization of such tweets and such a portrayal in the media was so difficult to me on a personal level.

But I kept asking: Is what’s happening legal? I fled Syria fearing political prosecution to come to the United States to face the same fate of political prosecution.

Do you have a view on why it was you? I will say — because I had to prepare for this show — I needed to make sure I knew the really inflammatory things you’ve said.

And I found inflammatory things said by people near you at different times. Or by an Instagram account that’s part of a group you’re a part of. That kind of thing. But I couldn’t find that much from you.

Yes. I joked with a couple of friends before my detention that I would be Trump’s perfect target if he wanted to do anything regarding that. But it was a joke, I didn’t think that —

Why would you be his perfect target?

A Palestinian. My name is Mahmoud, and I was vocal in the media. That’s the perfect target to make an example out of. Because it’s not about me. It’s not because he hates me. It was just the perfect recipe to make an example out of because the main goal of targeting me is to chill speech in this country. To make an example out of me, that even if you are a permanent resident, you’re not safe. That we have ways to come after you.

That’s the main message that they wanted to deliver by targeting me.

The other thing is because I present a different narrative than what the Israel lobby and this administration wants to show — that Palestinians are violent. Palestinians just want to bomb things.

But I presented a different reality to that — that we know what we’re doing. We want justice and freedom and dignity for everyone. That we are educated, that we are doing this from the strong belief in human rights and in the dignity of all people.

I want to go back to the Rubio termination notice.

The legal grounds here are that someone — an alien in the language of the law here — who the secretary of state has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.

I’ve tried to look at what the Trump administration has said about the justification of this. They’ve offered a few. One is a view that fighting antisemitism is a foreign policy priority of the United States, and that you are antisemitic and that your presence here is then in conflict with that priority.

How do you respond to that?

It’s just baseless. There isn’t any truth to that, and it’s absurd. In fact, what is a threat to combating antisemitism in this country is this administration’s unconditional support to a country that’s committing a genocide in the name of the Jewish people. They’re trying to conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism, with anti-Israel policies or sentiment.

The same way they’re also trying to now conflate pro-Palestine activism and pro-Hamas speech. That’s their main goal. But a federal court judge said that it’s likely unconstitutional that the administration targeted me.

I’m not sure how much you know, but this provision was used in the 1950s to go after Jewish immigrants in this country.

It has a very proud lineage.

You touched on this glancingly, but one of the arguments they’ve made about you is — I think the word they used was “aligned”: The activities are aligned with Hamas. And Hamas is a designated terrorist organization under U.S. law. So again, that would make you potentially in conflict with American foreign policy.

This goes again into the attempt by this administration, or just Israel, in general, to group pro-Palestine activism with supporting Hamas — which is not true.

What I stand for, what I’m advocating for, is the end of the genocide, the end of the occupation, the end of the apartheid regime and the end of complicity of Columbia University in this regime.

As simple as that. I don’t how that makes me aligned with Hamas or with anyone, but that’s what I stand for.

Another thing has become more present in the administration’s rhetoric — and not just about you. JD Vance just gave a speech about citizenship where he makes this point about Zohran Mamdani, and it has become a more significant part of the rationale for a lot of what they’re doing, which is: Being in America is a privilege — it’s not a right. And that the right response to that privilege, that gift — you came here fearing persecution in other places — is gratitude, not protest.

They believe it weakens America to allow the presence of immigrants who are critiquing what America is, what America’s foreign policy is.

Maybe — I think only maybe, but — maybe citizens are allowed to do that. Maybe native-born Americans are allowed to do that. But you, here on the largess of the American government, you should be quiet and grateful and treat your presence here as a privilege. And they have decided to start deporting people who don’t.

How do you think about that argument?

This is a very dangerous argument.

This is then about selective democracy — selective rights to people.

This administration is trying to target anyone who doesn’t fit the very narrow definition of what an American should be or who is a real American in this country.

If you don’t look like Stephen Miller, then you’re not an American. That’s eventually what they want us to do.

Same with the privilege part of it. It’s a privilege of the law — not a privilege of the administration — to be in this country. I’m married to an American citizen who was born in this country. My son is American. So I get that privilege from the law.

This is how this administration is trying to portray everything right now — that anything is a privilege. Federal funding is a privilege. Medicare is a privilege. Birthright citizenship is a privilege. Freedom of speech, due process is a privilege.

This is very dangerous because you can’t have a democracy for some. It’s not democracy, then. It’s just — I’m not sure of a word to describe that, but it’s absolutely not a democracy. It would just be an autocracy.

When you were in the ICE detention facility, you had become by this point a national cause — with the right calling you all kinds of names but many people also rallying around you, bringing attention to your case. “Shalom Mahmoud” made sure a lot of people knew who you were.

You were there with a lot of people whose names were not known. Tell me a bit about your fellow inmates. Tell me what you learned and saw about what’s happening in the immigration system, in the ICE detention centers, during those 104 days.

Coming to America to study and to live, to build a life here — I never imagined that there is such injustices happening on U.S. soil.

One example is a 45-year-old man who has been in this country since 2021. He was picked up from his court hearing, leaving behind his wife, who’s battling cancer, and four children under the age of 11.

This man was at his court hearing, going through the process of getting documentation. His wife had a chemotherapy appointment upcoming, and he was literally crying every day.

It was so normal seeing people crying in the detention center.

Another story is a person coming to me, showing me a piece of paper and asking: What is this paper about?

Since I have a master’s degree and I know how bureaucracy works, a lot of people would come to me with questions. I was like: You don’t know what this is? And he was like: No. They gave it to me. They made me sign it.

And it’s his deportation order, and the next day he was deported.

A 19-year-old came to ask me: Can my mom continue to visit me? His mom would drive every week for four hours from New Orleans to see him, but she’s also undocumented. So he came to ask me if it was safe for her to come to visit. And I had to tell him: No, it’s not safe, because they may arrest her, and then you wouldn’t have anyone to support you on the outside.

Just so many stories, left and right. You see the injustice happening there, the dehumanization of being called criminals on the news, while the vast majority of them were either picked up from court hearings, from ICE check-ins or from their work.

Maybe it’s because of my ignorance, but I never thought that this was actually happening — where the immigration system is very corrupt. It is, in fact, a kangaroo court. It’s fully controlled by the executive branch, fully controlled by the attorney general.

In a letter you wrote or that you dictated there, you referenced this line from Hannah Arendt: Who has the right to have rights?

Yes. That was, to me, the most difficult part of the whole experience — that the moment you enter the facility, you don’t have any rights. All your rights are just taken away from you.

That’s why I thought at that specific moment when writing about who has the rights to have rights — if, being a legal, permanent resident in this country, an educated person, I was stripped of all these rights in a matter of days, in a matter of moments?

While you’re in there, your wife, who was eight months pregnant when you were picked up, gives birth. What was that experience like for you?

I was always hoping that I would be out before the birth of my son. Noor and I have always dreamed about this moment. I mean, every parent has done the same. To lose that moment because a person decided so felt difficult.

The dehumanization of that moment, that I had to be on the phone listening to my wife at 2:30 a.m., just listening to her screams, and I can’t hold her hands or give her any supporting words — in a place where I can’t even raise my voice at that time.

You’re listening in this room with —

I was on the phone. There were like 70 people. They were asleep, the majority of them. I was also trying to resist crying at that moment. I didn’t want them to see me crying.

This is one of the moments that I would never forgive them for taking from me. This is part of the cruelty that was imposed on me. We went to ICE, to D.H.S., to request furlough, temporary release, but it was refused immediately.

We offered that they could put all the conditions they wanted just for me to be in that room for two hours. I have no criminal history, no risks whatsoever. Yet they refused because their main goal out of this is to punish me, to make an example out of me, to be as cruel as possible.

I always struggle to answer this question about that feeling, because I tried to prepare for that moment. I collapsed when I was on the phone, and I had to wait a number of hours until I could receive a picture of Deen, of the newborn.

But then the detainees actually made me a cake that night. I did not tell anyone, but then someone approached me and was like: You’re not OK.

I had stayed in my bunk the whole day. And he told me: You’re not OK. So I told him that my wife had given birth today. Then, an hour later — it’s a detention-made cake. It’s not a real cake, but that felt — to have them — and usually people save these things, but they brought it to me, and we celebrated that together.

That’s not a moment you can prepare for.

I always say it’s a drop in the sea of sorrow that Palestinians go through every day. It’s just a microcosm of what a Palestinian story is, why Palestinians are so dehumanized in this country and in the West — that all this administration had to say was that I’m Palestinian.

This is what we are fighting against now — the dehumanization of the Palestinians.

There’s a way in which your experience inverts the narrative that has taken hold.

Look, I’m Jewish. I don’t take antisemitism lightly. You should see my inbox. And it can be true that Jews can be unsafe, but the idea — it is real that there was antisemitism at Columbia, yet nobody there ended up as unsafe as you did.

I would push back regarding antisemitism at Columbia. I would really push back on that.

There was none?

I wouldn’t say there was none. I would say there is this manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia because of the protests.

Because Proud Boys were at the doors of Columbia, the very right-wing group. And there are incidents here and there. But it’s not like antisemitism is happening at Columbia because of the Palestine movement.

This is why I would always push back. I have a strong belief that antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism rise together. The incidents rise together because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways.

I’m not trying to sanitize history or sanitize the present when it comes to that. But going back to what you said, I paid so much because of that rhetoric, because of Columbia’s complicity, and a lot of the students who targeted me are pro-Israel students.

The same four or five students would tweet about me every day, just to silence me because it was easier for them to silence me, to throw me in prison, than to actually reflect on what I’m saying, to actually listen to this — even if it’s uncomfortable.

And I know it’s uncomfortable. Because supporting a genocide should be uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is very different from being unsafe.

I want to get into the chants — like “From the river to the sea,” “Globalize the intifada.” I heard someone on your podcast say: Oh, I don’t like the chant “Globalize the intifada.”

Yes, you don’t like it. It’s not being chanted for you to like, it’s actually to make you uncomfortable — so you have to think about your complicity in what’s happening.

Words matter. The fact that Palestinians are being attacked for whatever chants, symbols, anything they do should be addressed.

You have the B.D.S. — the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. It’s a very peaceful movement. And yet it was labeled antisemitic and criminalized — and criminalized in the United States in many states.

You have people dictating what your chants should be. And with “Globalize the intifada” being made to be about violence and globalized killing. It’s not. It was overwhelmingly civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation.

The second intifada included some instances of violence —

It included many suicide bombings.

Yes, 100 and something. But it also included the killing of 3,000 Palestinians.

I’m not — I’m just saying that the fact that many Jewish people hear “Globalize the intifada” as “Globalize the violent struggle” is not based on nothing.

I think it’s based on policing Palestinian thought and speech. That’s what it’s based on. Because “From the river to the sea” — from the Palestinian perspective — no one ever said that it’s a violent call.

Yet you see this narrative that it’s a call to erase Israelis from Palestine — which no one said that. It’s actually the Likud party that says that from the river to the sea should all be Jewish sovereignty there. It’s not Palestinians who said that.

But there have always been different factions of Palestinians. In the same way that you’re saying it’s not fair to ask Palestinians to be perfect victims, it’s also, I think, not reasonable to collapse — there have been many more violent factions of the Palestinian struggle. There have been plenty of periods when what Hamas meant from things like that was much more annihilatory.

Yes. But the intifada was not started by Hamas.

No, I agree. But the second intifada very much involved them.

It involved — but that doesn’t mean it started because of —

I’m just saying that when you say that nobody ever said it this way —

No, no, I’m saying the way that the students are saying that.

The students — that’s fair.

The students never said that. To us, it means let’s globalize the struggle to liberate Palestine.

That it shouldn’t feel convenient when Palestinians are being killed every day and the world is silent. That’s what the uprising is about.

And again, I don’t want to sanitize history. Like I told you, the second intifada involved violent acts, but overwhelmingly, they were peaceful. And in the second intifada, over 3,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel. In the first intifada, 1,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel, too.

The place where I overwhelmingly agree with you is that there is a broad effort to demand that Palestinians speak perfectly that is not demanded of Jewish people.

There is no end of chants that happen on Jerusalem Day in Israel — and no end of rhetoric.

Mm-hmm.

I went to a synagogue when I was young that I ended up walking out of when my rabbi told my confirmation class that Israel would be within its rights to displace all Palestinian people. That was normal. That was a reform synagogue.

I watched an interview you were giving and heard the repeated demands that you denounce Hamas. Not just killings of civilians, but Hamas itself.

There is an insistence that Palestinians, in my experience, denounce struggle almost entirely. And it’s not applied equally. The demand that you would denounce every part of Israeli government or life, including the ruling government right now that is creating a mass starvation, is not demanded of Jewish people.

So there’s a huge double standard here.

Yes, absolutely. That’s why you wouldn’t find many Palestinians answer that question. It’s not about Hamas — it’s about just the perspective of asking this question, the dehumanization of asking this question.

Because it’s not about my political view about Hamas. They only want to hear yes or no. That’s it. It’s not about what I think about it.

And this is being used to credit or discredit Palestinians. If I condemn Hamas, then I am a Palestinian worthy of listening to. If I don’t, then I’m not.

And this is what gets Palestinians angry with this line of questioning. Because as I said, Palestinians are the ones now being starved and genocided.

Because even if Hamas does not exist tomorrow, the Israeli occupation and supremacy would continue against the Palestinians. So it’s not about Hamas.

I want to pick up your story here. What leads to your release?

I’m out on bail with very restrictive conditions. I have to reside in New York, I have very few places to go to.

But a federal court ordered that my detention was likely unconstitutional, that I was targeted for my freedom of speech. That there is no evidence of what the administration has said about me.

But the legal fight is long. The administration is waging lawfare against me. They are basically appealing every decision, trying to bring retaliatory charges against me so I just shut up and leave the country.

But we’ll continue to fight because, unfortunately, there’s no other option right now.

You’re giving interviews like this one. You were on Capitol Hill recently. Tell me about that decision.

I’m demanding accountability for the overreach, for the illegality of my detention.

I want to bring it to what really matters, which is ending the genocide in Gaza. That’s why that was central to my conversation, whether with the media or with Congress members.

Because what’s happening to me and to others is just a distraction from the real issue, which is the U.S. complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

A lot of people tell me to take a break or ask why I’m taking all these risks. But I really can’t take a break when the genocide is not taking a break. When, as of today, there are over 100 people who were starved to death.

There is a moral imperative for me to speak up, especially now that I have this platform that I should continue to use. Unfortunately, I did not choose this place. ICE did. However, I want to take that responsibility with pride and continue advocating for the rights of my people.

As always, our final question: What are three books you’d recommend to the audience?

The first book I would recommend is a newly published book: Omar El Akkad’s “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.” It’s exposing the hypocrisy between the West’s ideals and actions.

The second book is Edward Said’s “The Question of Palestine.” That was actually published in, I think, the late ’70s, before Hamas was founded. It’s a good glimpse into Palestinian thought when it comes to Palestine and Zionism, and Zionism from the perspective of Palestinians.

The third book is “My Promised Land” by Ari Shavit, which mirrors Rashid Khalidi’s “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.” To me, that was helpful because it shows that the Zionist, colonial project started in the 1880’s and confirms what Rashid Khalidi says in a lot of places.

Those are the three books that I would recommend.

Mahmoud Khalil, thank you very much.

Thank you, Ezra.

You can listen to this conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Carole Sabouraud, Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

[Ezra Klein joined Opinion in 2021. Previously, he was the founder, editor in chief and then editor at large of Vox; the host of the podcast “The Ezra Klein Show”; and the author of “Why We’re Polarized.” Before that, he was a columnist and editor at The Washington Post, where he founded and led the Wonkblog vertical. He is on Threads.]