Episode Details

Mahmoud Khalil was coming home from an Iftar dinner with his pregnant wife on March 8, 2025 when he was detained without a warrant and transported 1,500 miles to a Louisiana detention camp. A negotiator for the 2024 pro-Palestine student protests at Columbia University, Khalil was a legal permanent resident who’d committed no violence or crime; his abduction shocked the world. The Trump administration was seeking to expel Khalil, not for his acts, but for his otherwise legal “beliefs, statements and associations” which Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in short letter, would “compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest.” A New Jersey federal judge threw out that case and Khalil was released after 104 days in detention, but the backlash keeps on coming. In this courageous conversation, Mahmoud Khalil joins Laura Flanders to discuss the night of his terrifying detainment, the “Palestinian Exception” and the case brought against him by the Trump administration. They are alleging errors on his green card application and have ordered Khalil to be deported — possibly to Algeria or Syria where his life would be under threat. Despite the risks of deportation, Mahmoud Khalil continues to speak out, and he and his legal team have filed a civil rights lawsuit with the U.S. District Court of New Jersey against the Trump administration to challenge his arrest and detention by ICE. Join Khalil and Flanders as they ask why the question of Palestine is a test for U.S. democracy — and one we are failing.

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