On Saturday, March 22, hundreds packed the concert hall of the New York Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan for an event organized by the People’s Forum calling for the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil from ICE detention.
Weeks after his sudden arrest by plainclothes immigration authorities outside of his apartment building, Khalil still languishes in the notoriously violent ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil, his family and friends, his legal team, and the growing movement for his release are currently battling the Trump administration in order to bring the activist home before the birth of his first child next month.
Activists and organizers of the event vowed to keep the struggle going for Palestine and Khalil’s release. “We will let the Trump administration know in no uncertain terms, that as they carry out their war on our right to speak, to assemble, they will have to deal with us,” said Layan Sima Fuleihan, Education Director at the People’s Forum, speaking at the event, titled “Free Mahmoud, Free Palestine”.
“We stand with Mahmoud and all the student activists daring to resist. We will stop business as usual, and we will never stop until Palestine is free,” said Manolo De Los Santos, People’s Forum Executive Director, at the event.
Last week, the Trump administration added new accusations against Khalil, in a move that appears to be intended to sidestep the anti-free speech accusations that have emerged from his case. Trump’s Justice Department lawyers claim that Khalil failed to disclose his work for UNRWA, and also some work he did for the UK government after 2022.
Legal battle continues
On Saturday, Shezza Abboushi Dallal, an attorney at the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) Project and part of Khalil’s legal team, provided some updates to his case. According to Dallal, Khalil’s legal team is fighting tooth and nail to have Khalil moved from Louisiana to ICE detention in New Jersey, and to have him released from detention on bail, to return home to his wife Noor Abdalla, who is due to give birth in less than a month. Khalil’s legal team is also fighting his immigration case in an administrative court in Louisiana.
“The legal fight continues on all fronts,” Dallal addressed the crowd of hundreds. “And it will continue until Mahmoud is brought back here, home, with his wife, and soon his newborn child, and until his constitutional rights are vindicated.”
Dallal continued: “We know this is a test case for how far the government can take punishing organizers. And this administration says as much. They tell us plainly, that Mahmoud’s case is, ‘the blueprint.’”
“What’s at stake in this case is the very ability to dissent,” she said. According to Dallal, if Khalil’s case is the blueprint, “your collective refusal to accept it is too.”
Attendees at the event shared a willingness to fight for Khalil and the right to dissent. One attendee, Sasha, who like Khalil is a green card holder, told Peoples Dispatch that she attended to support the activist because she doesn’t believe that “expressing our right to free speech should be a punishable act, especially if it’s something in support of Palestine, a country that’s being oppressed.”
Jewish activists stand against accusations of anti-semitism
“My entire life, I have been frustrated by the actions that Israel has taken in Gaza,” Montana, another attendee, told Peoples Dispatch. “I continue to be frustrated by them, and also angry. And this unconscionable arrest that was made a few weeks ago is further proof that our country is not doing what they are supposed to be doing and has always not done what they are supposed to be doing,” she continued. “I’m a Jew, and I proudly support Gaza, and do not support Israel.”
The movement for Palestine, and especially the wave of Gaza Solidarity Encampments that began at Columbia University and spread worldwide, have been accused of anti-semitism by right-wing and Zionist groups. This is also the pretext that the Trump administration is using to crack down on student activism at Columbia University.
On March 13, the Trump administration issued what has been called a “ransom note” against the institution, demanding the University take action against student protest and challenging the academic freedom of certain departments if the institution wanted to retain USD 400 million in federal funding that Trump was threatening to revoke.
Columbia expelled, fired, suspended, or revoked the degrees of 22 students over allegations of pro-Palestine protest activity on the same day that the Trump administration issued its threatening letter. And on the precise deadline issued by the Trump administration, March 20, the university capitulated to Trump’s demands, ending faculty control of the Middle East, South Asian, and African studies department and the Center for Palestinian Studies, declaring anti-Zionist policies of student clubs to be anti-semitism, and empowering campus police to arrest students.
One of those 22 sanctioned students is Grant Miner, who is the president of United Auto Workers Local 2710, which represents graduate student workers at Columbia. Miner himself is Jewish and is a Jewish studies scholar, making Trump’s accusations of anti-semitism against student leaders ring hollow. Miner also spoke at the event on Saturday.
“Many of the students who participated [in protest] were Jewish,” Miner told the crowd. “However, I would also like to dispel the myth that we, as Jewish people, hold special or necessary insight into this issue,” Miner continued. “More and more people realize everyday that what is happening in Palestine is wrong and students who protested stand on the correct side of the most important moral issue of our time.”
Artists speak out
Speakers also included filmmaker and artist Alana Hadid, who is Palestinian and the sister of supermodels Gigi and Bella Hadid, celebrated actor Susan Sarandon, as well as poet and rapper Macklemore, who wrote the song “Hind’s Hall” inspired by Columbia student protesters who extended the Gaza Solidarity Encampment to Hamilton Hall, renaming it after the five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was targeted and killed by Israeli forces in January of 2024.
Macklemore spoke about his own fears of speaking out in support of the Palestinian cause, including fears centering around being labeled as anti-semitic. But ultimately, he reached the conclusion that “it is our moral obligation to adamantly protest the atrocities we are witnessing and funding or we are complicit.”
“I want to live in a world where standing up against genocide isn’t brave, it’s human,” said Macklemore.
Hadid, whose family members were victims of the Nakba, said that “what is happening [in Palestine] is not complicated.” Last week, Israel broke the ceasefire agreement and resumed the genocide in Gaza.
“This is a genocide, this is ethnic cleansing, this is the crime of the century yet we are the ones being silenced, we are the ones losing our jobs, we are the ones losing our homes, because we dare to speak the truth,” Hadid said. “But we refuse to be silent.”
