“My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. 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.

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.”

Read the rest of Mahmoud Khalil’s letter from an ICE prison in Louisiana here.

A New York court has ruled that Khalil’s case challenging his unlawful detention will be transferred to New Jersey, a small win after the Trump Administration attempted to transfer the case to Louisiana, far away from Khalil’s residence and community. They also reaffirmed a previous ruling that blocked his immediate deportation.

Samah Sisay, a member of Khalil’s legal team, said, “The government transferred Mr. Khalil to a remote private prison in Louisiana hours after his arrest and the filing of his original habeas petition — an intentional and retaliatory attempt to silence his speech in support of Palestinian rights and interfere with the jurisdiction of the New York and New Jersey Courts. Mr. Khalil should be free and home with his wife awaiting the birth of their first child, and we will continue to do everything possible to make that happen.”

Read more quotes from Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team and the progression of his court case at the Center for Constitutional Rights website here.

Demand Mohamad Khalil’s release by signing this petition.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action. Emphasis original.)