Mahmoud Khalil makes first public statement amid feds claim he was sent to Louisiana due to bedbugs, overcrowding

CBS News — A Columbia University student and green card holder arrested by U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York City over his involvement in the pro-Palestinian campus protests made his first public remarks since being taken into custody earlier this month, in which he described himself as a “political prisoner.”

In his letter dictated by phone from a detention facility in Louisiana, Mahmoud Khalil said that his only concern at the time of his March 8 arrest was for the safety of his wife, Noor Abdalla, who was then about eight months pregnant.

“I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side,” Khalil said. “DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation.”

Khalil said he slept on a “cold floor” at an ICE field office in Lower Manhattan, before being transferred to the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he “slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.”

“The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent,” Khalil said. “Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.”

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