The Lost Episodes: MAHMOUD KHALIL
2026-08-12 21:55:00 • 1:05:10
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Welcome back to the Lost Episode series, Adam Friedland show.
This next episode, we're really happy we can release it for various reasons we couldn't
for a long time and now we got the green light.
My guest is Mahmoud Khalil.
Khalil of course was a grad student at Columbia who worked as a negotiator between the administration
and the Palestine Solidarity Movement.
Early last year he was detained by ICE and held for over 100 days.
His wife was American, she was eight months pregnant and he was a legal permanent resident.
Despite his release, his court case and his fight against his deportation continues and
he continues to challenge the government's broader attacks on free speech and court.
I think it's a really interesting, important conversation.
I really hope you guys like it.
Season three, Adam Friedland show, comes out in two weeks.
Enjoy you guys.
I'll be in Denver, New York County, Town Hall, whatever.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mahmoud Khalil.
Hello.
How are you?
Good.
Good.
Why do they put the mic pack on your pocket like that?
I did actually.
Oh, you did.
No, no.
Hi, they'll leave.
It's fine.
Okay.
No, I can be not started with an insult.
All right.
So, like I said, I'm being set up.
I'm a goofball and this is...
I had your team send a list of things that could be funny and I'm sorry, guys.
I'm sorry.
You need liars.
You need liars.
He loves plants but he kills them all.
That's hilarious.
I don't kill them all.
Oh, so they're, so they're shooting on you.
No, no, I think not.
Why, in one of the worst, you're in a civil rights hero and they're telling you to say
that you kill all your plants?
No, no, no.
She, none of my wife, like she's holding a grudge against me because I killed her
orchid.
And now she's just like the back.
You're an old man in a 31-year-old's body.
You haven't been through enough.
Why are they writing this?
Is this a roast list?
Wait, your team's...
Listen, you have 30 lawyers?
I mean, on one case.
On one case?
So how many...
I have like seven, six active cases now.
It's a lot to keep track of but yeah, at least 30 on the main case.
30 and then publicity, you have like 50.
I mean, you got a book deal?
I did.
Are you signed at an agency?
Yeah, you were.
With, um, to a politician, with Macmillan?
Macmillan?
Macmillan.
Okay, that was a good joke.
That was a funny one.
Oh, that's a lot.
Do you have an agency?
You should start, you're maybe acting a little bit.
I mean, no, I'm not.
But I would have enough now, so.
Do you have as many lawyers as Justin Bieber right now?
Just like, but for nothing, to me, like, he did nothing wrong.
For going to college, you know?
For going to college, you know?
Every time I think about it, I was like, why do I need all these lawyers?
Um, I think we should now stop the boofing and no more laughing, guys.
No, anything else, like?
Oh, I mean, these are nutritious.
You guys need to just lie.
You need to be like, he's the one of two people that know how to flip and sing.
Besides Benson Boone, let's get into you.
Palestine has been a seminal issue of the law.
And it's really happened in the last three years.
What's happened to you in the last year?
So basically, in March, um, 2025, like, about a year now, um, the Secretary of State
designated me as a foreign policy threat.
Yeah.
Uh, for what, I don't know, like, foreign policy, foreign policy threat.
And like, to me, that was the change their mind or something.
Doesn't look like it, you know?
No.
Like, we're still sending more and more weapons and money to, to Israel.
Well, but what is a foreign policy threat?
Do you know, like, I mean, is it a bit, it's just like a statute from, it's from the
52 actually, it was, it was brought or it was used to prevent Jewish immigration into
the country.
So they want to prevent, you know, the communists from coming into the country.
So they came up with this statute in 1952.
It has never been used against, like, someone like me since ever, since 1952.
Okay.
It was mainly used to prevent people from coming in, not to actually like prosecute people
here in the country.
But to be honest, it's just like, to me, it's all like, for me, it's a movie this past
year, like, why am this, in this situation?
I literally did, I consider myself, they did nothing.
And it's when, when I compare, like, you know, my activism to the other kids at school
or to the other students, I'm like, you know, I'm under the bus.
You know, I'm a little bit, you're about to be a terrible, you know, like, I was, I was
literally on, on the very moderate side like that.
You were a little bit too negotiating, you know?
Like, you know, like, we don't need you here, like, go negotiate.
So, yeah.
So, to tell, to tell your story for, for those who don't know, you're at Columbia as a
graduate student.
Yeah.
You lived in student housing?
I did, I did live in student housing with your wife, with my wife and, uh, pregnant wife
with her.
We were expecting a child in April.
I was detained in March.
Yeah.
So, I was in 34th that month.
I graduated.
I graduated.
What day was your child born?
Uh, today actually.
Okay.
On, uh, April 21st.
So, you, you, you went down to Louisiana to miss the birth and now you're here on the
Adam Friedland show.
I think that kid, it's a, it's a first birthday though.
Yeah.
It's usually people just standing around like a baby.
He doesn't want to know.
Yeah, they don't know anything.
Obviously, campus activism was a hot topic, which is like, first of all, why the fuck?
They were acting like at UCLA in Columbia, they invented kids protesting.
The most normal thing in the world.
I mean, that's what you do, especially at Columbia, where since the 60s, they, they also
occupied Hamilton Hall the same building that the students recently occupied the 80s,
they did the same.
In the 70s, they bombed academic buildings.
So, right?
Like, I mean, I'm not saying that, like, I'm just saying that this is, I mean, this is,
this is the tradition of, of, of, especially at Columbia and, and these students who were,
I mean, most of them 17 to 19 years old, 17 to 20 years old.
Yeah.
They were very courageous.
They refused to remain silent while they are seeing all these atrusties happen on their
phones while Columbia University was gaslighting them about what they are talking about.
And these students, they had three simple demands.
Like, the first one is to disclose Columbia's investments, because Columbia has,
So they're in downward.
Has a large environment, over $14 billion.
They are the largest real estate owner in the city of New York.
And the second one is to divest any investments in weapon manufacturers and violating human
rights.
And the third one is to boycott Israeli academic institution.
Their relationship with television.
They have a, that's one, but also they are operating sort of a satellite campus in,
in Tel Aviv, Columbia's Global Center, in Tel Aviv, where they have another one in
a man like less than 70 miles away from that.
So all these are political statements like to really legitimize Israel.
And this is what the students said, like me as a Palestinian, I pay Columbia's tuition,
but I can't go to Israel.
Israel would not allow me.
You mentioned that you lived in Israel for a year.
I'm not allowed to even visit.
And my grandparents were born there.
And Tiberius.
And Tiberius.
And they were there for generations.
It was a place where actually it had a Jerusalem in Tiberius for more understanding, had an
indigenous Jewish population, prior to Zionism.
I was a place where Muslims and Jews were together.
And all of my grandmother tells me about their Jewish neighbors.
It wasn't that something that's out of the ordinary.
No, it was like normal.
She tells me she speaks some Hebrew, like very, very, very basic.
Because they were working together.
Mostly they were farmers, like the Jewish population there, and even the Arab population.
So there was that relationship.
They say it's a very spiritual place, Tiberius.
I haven't been, I mean, all the stories I get are from my grandmother's.
But it's the only story I've ever seen.
It's so...
In a simpler sense, I hear you explaining just like an obvious thing.
Like, it's the most obvious thing in the world.
In a university, academic institution, they have...
There are kids that want to make a kind of a tangible effect on something that is going
on, and it's something related to you being Palestinian, right?
No, absolutely.
I mean, there's something related to...
Look, the student movement was composed of hundreds of thousands of students across the
United States, you know.
They were doing Shabbat.
They were doing Shabbat.
They were Shabbat, they were saying, I attended my first theatre.
They should have honed it down.
It's a little bit much to do as a satyr in the encampment.
Just relax, okay?
We're sorry.
But also they wanted to target me because I'm Palestinian, that's very...
But also to chill the speech of others, like the ones who look what we did with this person.
So if you speak about Palestine, we'll do the same for you.
No matter if you did no crime.
Like now we are a year and one month after my arrest.
They haven't brought any evidence that I committed any crime.
Zero.
Is it the case that they're kind of bearing you in legal procedural red tape so that they don't
have to ask?
This is the main immigration case where they're trying...
Because the immigration system is fully controlled by the administration, like 100%, it is like
kangaroo court in terms of what decisions they can make, how they make them, their roles,
like it's not a title of the oral federal court.
So what they're trying to do is to tell the federal court, you can't touch his case because
it's under the immigration process.
And this is why they brought me into them because a day before my arrest, a legal case later
showed against the administration that they themselves, like the H.S. and the White House,
they admitted that they don't have any grounds to detain me except for this through discrimination.
So they looked into fraud.
They looked into everything.
They could...
They couldn't bring anything.
So they were like, oh, there's this statue from 1952.
Let's try it.
To contextualize it, you were functioning as a negotiator.
One thing that's apparent about you from talking on Friday and right now is that you're calm,
right?
But like a protest could get kind of hot, right?
And is that why they selected you?
Yeah, mostly just because I was literally like the one.
At first, I was older than most of the people there.
I already had experience in diplomacy.
I worked for the British Embassy in Beirut.
I already had 10 years of experience when I came, I worked experience when I came to
Colombia.
That's one.
But the second thing is because I can't meet someone in the middle.
The students of course and the faculty, they trust me.
They trust my judgment, but also that I'm not there just like to talk.
No, I want to get results.
I can't meet people in the middle.
I'm usually calm.
I'm very calm.
Like more than I should be.
Yeah.
Well, no, it seems like it's...
I think what's necessary is that understanding how you became calm.
I think like you were born in Syria, is that correct?
Yeah.
So I was born and raised in Syria in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Syria.
Were third generation?
Third second.
So you were born in Syria?
No.
Then my grandparents were born in Palestine.
So I was born and raised there.
I stayed there until the age of 18 when the Syrian uprising started in 2011.
I was 16.
I participated in that uprising in 2011.
It's really cute.
You did the five minute protest?
It's like even less because...
And that's why I tell people here, the risk of protesting in Syria was you were getting
shot.
You were getting deported.
We're going to do a 30 second protest.
You just like get the film, they film you and you upload it.
But then the regime arrested two of my friends or the people who I was organizing with.
So the second day, I fled to Lebanon.
Did you perish over to?
No, no.
I was alone.
Actually it was on my 18th birthday.
Like a week after my 18th birthday that I fled to Lebanon.
Because I had to do it within, you know, like my friends were arrested on January 11th
at night, January 13th, the morning I was in Beirut.
And there, of course, I can be rude.
I did not speak any English back then.
I was supposed to start studying aviation engineering at the university in Syria.
So I couldn't do that.
In Lebanon I had to literally do construction work for six, seven months until I found a
decent job that then they offered me a scholarship to go to school to learn English.
I like this construction work angle for the PR people.
I think that, yeah, he's a master, you know, just like our Lord and Savior, old JC.
No, no, I enjoyed it.
I was a painter and enjoyed being like painting walls and going to houses.
Because at that point I did not want to add like more stress to my own family who was still stuck in Syria.
I couldn't move to Lebanon.
Because Lebanon compared to Syria is very expensive.
Like insanely expensive compared to Syria.
So like $100 in Syria can survive you for a couple of weeks and Lebanon two days.
So absolutely my family like.
So what's the like living in New York?
I mean, I love it.
But it's gotta be like, you gotta be like, this is great.
It's absolutely great.
And in Lebanon I lived in Chetida camp, which is one of the more.
Of course, you know, under-privileged communities like Palestinian communities.
And also there was a massacre.
And there was a massacre committed by Israel and their Lebanese allies back in Haiti.
The full-end shooting.
So it's, you know, like I went through all of that.
So to me what I'm now is just like another, an extension of all the misery that I went through all my life.
Does that, that's why you're calm?
I think I believe that this has contributed to my calmness.
But also like I come from a family that went through a lot.
Like since before my birth, like my grandparents when they were kicked out of Liberia's,
they lived in a tent for a number of years.
And then they died in a mud house.
So my dad was born in a mud house.
My parents were married in a mud house.
My mom's like brothers like also were imprisoned by Israel for a number of years.
So it's not that, you know, it's like my story is unique.
It's just like an extension of that.
But even like in 1870 France exiled my grand, my mom's grand,
grandparent from Algeria, from French Algeria to the Ottoman,
Ottoman Palestine.
So it's sort of friends in the family unfortunately, all this like exile.
So you paid your way through university in Lebanon?
I did so I was basically working full time.
Was it like being 18 or just like alone?
I mean, I was, I loved it, you know, like with the family party.
And then yeah, partying and going around Beirut is the best city for part.
Is the parents of the millies exactly?
So I honestly like like that part.
You had the beach.
Yep.
Beach mountain and it's beautiful.
I mean, the first, the first year was really tough because I was basically trying
because in Lebanon everyone speaks English or French and, you know, I'm that guy who
so how good at English did you get if it's like a, if people are multi-lingual?
How did you meet your wife?
I guess like she was.
So when I was in Lebanon, I was working basically, I was running schools and refugee centers
for here in refugees.
And one of the programs we had is to bring international volunteers to teach English to
refugee kids in Lebanon.
So in my wife, who's American born and raised in Flint, came in one of these trips to teach
English.
So we met at this program, basically back in 2016.
How did, did, how did you, how did you, like, how did you, how did you get followed?
I mean, it seems like she was the one that was like we're getting married.
I mean, yeah, so we spent like a month, it was a group of 30 people, so mostly, mostly
Americans.
So we spent all that time and at that time, like I was running, I was running the program,
so I did not have time really, you know, to, yeah, but then afterwards, like we talked,
we met like a few months after and, I mean, you started as friends, like a few months
and we were like, we were serious, but then, you know, long distance for a couple of years,
but I got a scholarship to Colombia in 2018 to do a short course.
And executive course at Columbia, so I did that.
It was, yeah, it was like something emerging leaders and not a profit management, something
like that.
So your desire was to be like to work as a, like in, what's the best way to work?
So my desire was most of the time, like, work in international, like, affairs, I would
say, in public service, but particularly, like, to present Palestine, because I always,
like, growing up when reading about Palestine, I felt that there is that vacuum of Palestinians
speaking on their own potentially.
Yeah, so I, before my arrest, I had a job offer at the UN, like via policy advisor with
an organization.
How does it feel like, they've kind of let you guys down.
I mean, they fucked myself up.
Yeah, I've let you guys down a lot.
A lot, a lot.
You're going to go to the place where the, like, I don't know.
I mean, again, like, that was, I feel that this is it all I could play.
You can try and do something for within.
Exactly.
So what's really from within is just, you know, we, the fight for Palestine is, is, requires
every avenue.
And that was an avenue that I felt I can't contribute to.
But also, like, more importantly, like, I wanted to be a voice for my people.
I feel that, especially in the United States, and following Edward Said's journey here,
because that was like the only example.
I mean, we come from a very different, like, background, you know, like, Edward Said
and me.
But like, I felt like, you know, there is so much need for, for Americans and, and the
people just like to hear Palestinians, because we always hear others talk about Palestinians,
what they want, what, who they are.
But they don't.
We talked about this on the phone, right?
And like, I think, in a tangible sense, like, the kids at Columbia wanted to do something
that was tangible.
Like, Palestine has obviously been a similar issue, especially for the younger generation.
That has emerged only recently in the States.
But does it feel sometimes like a little bit of that, a little bit sometimes that advocacy
could be disconnected from actual Palestinians that are actually dying?
It could be, yeah, absolutely.
I wouldn't say it's malicious or any of that.
I think it's just like, there isn't too many Palestinian voices here, but also to center
Palestinians here, it's a bit tough, because a lot of people here, they only read the theory
of resistance, the theory of what Palestinians are.
Like at Columbia, there were only, like, I think, less than ten students who came from Palestine,
actually, from Palestine.
So it was so difficult.
And these students tend to be very risk-evirus because they have so much to lose.
I'm going to merge.
I mean, I'm a living example of that.
Compared to other kids or other students in school who have some sort of privilege, they
can get arrested, or they can't risk at rest.
They can, you know, for them, it might be like Palestine is only like a few years, but
to me, it's like my life is Palestine.
So the dynamic is a bit complicated when it comes to that, but I don't think it's malicious.
It's just like, also, everything happened so fast.
Like, then, the encampment happened about a year and a half after October 7th, but also
before the encampment, like, actually, in all this, sorry, six months, it was in April
2024.
So yeah, six months.
It was so fast.
So everything happened so fast.
You find these students being put on this national, international spotlight in a second.
When the encampment happened, and none of them is mediatoried.
None of them, like, what they care about is to actually get the university, to get the
university, not to use their tuition fees to kill people.
So they've only known Netanyahu as the prime minister, right?
17 years?
Yeah.
So their entire lives, like, you know, they've only known.
I mean, before him was Bennett, who's more.
No, he had better.
They've had some goofballs.
Yeah, they've had some real wacky guys.
But also, like, these students, they can see the injustice and the hypocrisy, like, in
daylight.
Like, they are being, you know, they were advocating for the rights of Palestinians, and
they were.
Yeah, and they were seeing like the killing.
You see the politicians, you see the university gaspiting them.
Like, no, this is not happening.
To them was, that was shocking, that this level of hypocrisy and level of standards can
happen in daylight.
That's why they, I mean, they lost faith in the administration.
No one wanted to actually talk to the Trump, to the Columbia administration.
So how did you become a negotiator?
I'm a bit of a crack, so, like, I come from, I come from, like, you know, a history of
bureaucracy work.
I mean, I worked for the British, who's like the oldest bureaucracy in the word.
So I would just say, like, and, you know, just like email the administrators, since, since
even before October 7, because anti-Palestinian racism is institutionalized at Columbia before
October.
When I first joined Columbia in January 2023, I joined the Palestinian group there and
we wanted to invite human rights watch, we wanted to invite BDS, like, just to talk about,
that's what you do in international affairs of school, you know, like, you bring experts.
Yeah.
But because it's about Palestine, Columbia would put us in a very long process of approval
of just, like, you know, they don't want us to do anything.
Yeah, but you guys had a bureaucrat.
Exactly.
I was like, you know, I got it.
So I would email them, I would fill the forums, I would read the policy manual, all of
that, and they would go back to them.
So I established this reputation of being communicative with, with the administration.
And also being Palestinian.
So that's also a part of that.
And also just being, you're just, who, the sense I got of who you are as a person, which
is just like, not someone that is a hothead, like, you're kind of like someone that can
maintain your cool.
I feel like you don't have to just explain any of this shit.
I think that it's just like, you're Palestinian and there's a war in Palestine, you're seeing
people dying and there's protests on your campus, you know.
Like, the, I think this is a history.
It's part of the distraction here, they want to create that, they want to distract us
from what's really happening in Palestine.
Right.
All the atrocities from the US complicity and sending weapons and just like to care about,
you know, what from the river to the sea means, what to globalize the antifada means.
Like, these are slogans and slogans that are not killing people, bombs are killing people.
For me personally, I just have to say like, as a Jewish person, especially like watching
Zoran's mayoral election, it was just, they were being Islamophobic to him and they
were saying that they have to do it for the Jews.
And it was revolting to me to watch because, yeah, I mean, and it was done by this guy
from like a political dynasty, right?
It's not even Jewish.
No, no, which is, which is totally absurd, but there is a problem.
Yeah, the antissimitism is real and there's rising, but it's not because of the Palestinian
movement, it's not because of these protests, it's because of first the openization of
antissimitism, it's because of the use of antissimitism as a way to go after.
The definition of antissimitism doesn't hold any weight if you say that any criticism
of Israel is really a thing.
So that's like the fact about like cheap, cheapening the fight of antissimitism, like
which is scary, like when you have a state that's insisting on using Judaism as a shield.
Yeah, it has them again into the start of David.
So they're seeing atrocities.
And this is what I've been saying, like again here, that's the only deflection that they
can have because who wants to be an antissimite?
No one wants to be an antissimite.
And that's what they use as an attack, like, oh, you're an antissimetic, because they're
really weaponizing that.
And this is what cheapening the fight against antissimitism.
I think that when I hear the narrative of the Palestinians, this is something I don't
know me when I was younger, like the narrative of you being in a different country, the
second generation in the refugee camp.
And then learning what happened in Sober and Shastilla, like learning about the knock,
but it's, it's, correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like you're unwanted people.
And that's what Jews were for 1800 years.
And it bothers me that more than the antissimitism thing, it bothers me that it feels like there's
an erasure of that, of who we are, like, and that if anyone could understand what it's
like to be a Palestinian, like, to be people that are unwanted and just kicked out of their
homes, and then they go to a new place and they're not wanted there, it should be Jewish
people.
And I mean, this is why I would agree to sound lies out Jewish people.
No, you don't have to say that.
No, I mean, I would say, like, you know, we do have that.
And I'm not like, you know, we have Jewish voices for peace and then Ben the Ark and if
not now, who are like really feeling that, you know, like being Jewish values that are
about social justice and what's happening.
Historically, yeah, I always thought that was cool because like I've said this before,
but like my parents, my dad and mom moved to Los Angeles because my parents lived in South
Africa.
They went away to the university, they came back, they got married, and then my dad got
called up to Angola to the Civil War and they were like, you know, why not it's a real
coward?
It's a regular, he's a Jane Fonda, you know, he's a real beatnik, you know?
No, so they didn't want to raise their family in a fucked up place.
But the white people that, including family friends, that vast, like a large proportion of
the people that joined the struggle and joined the ANC were Jewish people because they
understood what prejudice is.
But I mean, I would say like this is what Zionism is about, Zionism is about erasing the other,
erasing like the Palestinians erasing their stories, their history, their connection to the
land to create the citadel colonial entity that's Israel.
But historically, I mean, I wouldn't go, like I wouldn't marry now, like about Zionism
in the United States.
I mean, beyond that, it's just like, I don't know, we didn't have beef with Muslims.
Like the reason after the sped, this is so boring.
Okay.
But the reason after the sped, the rest went to the Middle East, they went to a more open
one, two house diners.
They were permitted in Muslim countries after the church.
If you're looking at the body count, you know, the church is crushing it.
I mean, they're like, they're world champs.
I mean, like I think it's like a little bit like it's strange to me that, because it's
another misunderstanding about the whole conflict is that this is something that's existed
for thousands of years.
It's not.
Yeah, I mean, Muslims are choosing, if I could use it.
Look, like I mean, like there was Palestine or the levant area, like Palestine, the bigger
Syria, it was a place of refuge for so many people.
We had the Armenians who fled the massacres against them, settled in Lebanon, Syria, and
Palestine.
You had the Caucasians, the Greek.
So it was a place of refuge.
And my family, my mum's family, they found refuge from Algeria in Palestine.
So it wasn't like something that's out of the ordinary that to receive Jewish refugees
or to receive anyone.
It's the fact that this group of people, they wanted to, they wanted execlusivity on the
land, which then stirred all the problems.
And before the battle for declaration, everyone was, I would say, oppressed and they're
the Ottomans, whether they are Muslim or whether they have a son, be care.
No, right.
Later, literally.
And has he apologized, okay?
I want to talk about Louisiana.
I grew up in the Southwest, right?
I grew up with a lot of Latinos, right?
And to me, when I was a kid, I learned about the Holocaust.
And my first question for my parents was like, how does an entire country become anti-Semitic,
all in one moment?
What happened was, it was invisible largely.
There were people that were taken, and they would see Jews get taken, but then that,
you know, life in Germany was, you'd go to the office the next day.
You know, you have a Christmas party to get a little too drunk.
It's not invisible.
I think it's, people choose not to look at it.
To me, I saw Los Angeles, I saw the Marines Los Angeles, and then I was like, oh yeah,
I'm going to the office like, you know, my life is not really disrupted, right?
You found yourself in a position with, and growing up around a lot of Mexican people,
a lot to, primarily Mexicans in the Southwest.
There are people that strictly want to make more money for their families, you know?
And people that come here to work too, you know, like that make our lives much easier.
And people that are invisible too, they are the most vulnerable people in our society.
In Minneapolis, we saw two American citizens get shot, there was an outcry, we saw an entire
American city under siege.
I don't think the question is being asked about what's been happening to these people
now for years.
What was your experience like in detainment?
I mean, just like on your point, like I, now I just like, I remember like, Juan, who
was like my bunkmate, who has been in the United States for over 24 years, like he arrived
here in 2001.
And it was like his second night, and he was just like so shocked that he's his in detention,
and he tells me like he was, he's a father of two US citizens, like his daughters were
nine and two, I believe.
But also he tells me like, oh, I have a roofing company.
I paid last year over $300,000 in taxes.
I was picked up from my workshop.
And to him, like he felt that his tax pay papers, like wear his way out.
Because he felt he was doing everything right.
He was picked up from work.
He, he employees like over 20, 20 workers.
And that was the type of every single person in detention.
But what really broke them was the fact that they are being so, do you, do you humanized
on, on, on the news, being called all the names.
And for them, they were like, we didn't like, we just wanted like, what's good for, for
our kids, what's good, what's good for our future.
And just to me, like that was like shocking, like to a lot, to a lot of them, like just
like the fact that they are being dehumanized this, this way.
A lot of the people were picked up from their eyes, check ins or core hearings.
So they were literally doing that I think, to find themselves in a place with over 70 men
in one room, sharing like one big room, so cold, you only get a thin blanket.
That was what the room you were in.
Exactly.
And, and, and Louisiana.
They don't know, they, they don't understand like, I mean, they don't know their rights because
they either, I mean, which was shocking to me at least like I got some papers like what
I'm being.
But they had a bureaucrat.
Yeah, so I'm a bureaucrat.
Yeah.
No, but for them, like they did not even get that paper.
And I still remember like the, the man from Honduras who, who came to me and showed
me a paper, I was like, damn, you're fucked.
He was like, what's happening?
I mean, through a, and a translation.
He signed his deportation paper without knowing, without, without knowing English.
It was in English.
Yeah.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but the impression I get is that they want to make life so
intolerable for people.
If you're in detainment in the, in the States, primarily you're here legally, right?
And so they, if you're not legal, status they deport you.
So from what I understand, they're, they're correct me from wrong.
They're trying to make life so intolerable for these people that they will self deport.
They'll sign a piece of paper that says, I'm never coming back.
So some of them they don't have status.
They don't, that doesn't mean they committed any kind.
Yeah.
They came through the borders.
They've been here for so long.
And because you know, they, the US immigration system is so not only complicated, like it's
designed to execute such people from, from, from, from the system.
So for them, you know, like not, just like not having papers doesn't like really, I mean
the HSS is only 20 years old.
Oh, ice, it's only 20 years old.
Yeah, it's not, it's not that like people would think like, oh, like what, what we would
do without ice, like, you know, immigrants would be, oh no, like it's, it's a new, it's
a new thing.
It's, it's a new invention ice and then the HSS and for so long, Europe, like they, they,
they managed their immigration without ice, without looking people up, looking people
up and, and, and, and remote detention centers.
But what you said is exactly why is, is the fact that they make the conditions and such
detention centers so unbearable so that you would want to leave as soon as possible.
With everything, right, it's designed for that.
Do you see people, we've had a record number of people dying in the entertainment, like
the sea.
The detention, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the sea was, I think the highest since, since ever and we're only three,
four months into it.
Did you see anything like that?
Like, like, I mean, I had, I had another, another, like, fellow, Diteini with his leg
amputated.
And you can see that his leg is, is, is getting swollen.
He would go to the medical center, they would send him back and only after three weeks
that they sent him to a hospital.
After like, I don't know, I mean, it was, it was so bad, but also he chose to just like
self-deport or just sign the, the deportation documents.
And what was the company that, like, it's, it's a, these are privately owned facilities.
These, I mean, that was shocking, shocking for me because again, like, I'm not, I'm not
innocent of being ignorant about the immigration system in this country.
Oh, it's so bad.
I wasn't like, before, before my detention, I, I never thought about what I's detention
is.
I had no reason to believe like to, to, to, to learn about it.
Well, I was, like, I was, people know.
So I, because I was a green card holder, everything is good.
I was on track to get my, my US citizenship in, in two years.
So, I have a life with your wife.
So why would, you know, like, and it's, maybe it's stupid of me, like, I never thought
that something is happening.
But the moment I stepped in into these detention centers, I was just shocked, like, is this
really happening in this country?
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So we were on a roll there talking about I.
But so DJ Khaled, do you think that's the most famous Palestinian?
No.
Jesus is the most famous Palestinian.
Oh, I think I thought he was Jewish.
I mean, that's the thing, like, I mean, this changes everything.
I don't think it's mutually exclusive.
He was obsessed with his mother, you know?
I'm obsessed with my mother.
Yeah, same dude.
We're Jewish.
We're Jewish.
We're Jewish.
Okay.
The private prison aspect of it, like, I've heard reports that they make you buy water,
that they make it like, egregiously expensive to make phone calls.
Like, how are they, how are they, how are these companies like benefiting?
So everything about like the attention was about like profit, basically.
Yeah.
You know, the phone call, I think it was 10 cents per minute.
If it's domestic about a dollar, something if it's international, and most of the time
it's international.
Which Syrian prices, that's like the past.
Oh, that's like a house.
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah.
We want the power.
That's the power.
But also, like, with the Commissarion, and I mean, there were like few people who were
before coming to, very, very few before coming to ICE detention.
They were in federal detention or prison or in state prison.
And they would say, like, you know, take us back to the present, to the presents because
it's much cheaper.
Just like, the situation is much better than that.
Yeah.
But again, like, it's, and, but I mean, they would do everything for profit.
Like, if that means that they would starve you to death, they would do it because that
would save the money.
And that's like, was about the food.
Like, the food was terribly bad.
And they would say that because like, there was...
What was the food like?
No, I mean, there was room to improve the food as it is.
It's just like they don't want to.
The food was like literally beans, different color every day.
So one day we would have red eye beans, another day black bean, white bean, with some rice
and then...
I mean, depends on the day, but like, very, very basic.
I wasn't a vegetarian meal because I tried the meat once and it was like eating mud.
It's literally...
Yeah.
And they had to throw up and go to the vegetarian meal, which means like, you would never get
full, so you're always hungry.
So you lost like 15 pounds, which was...
Not bad.
Not bad.
Ozembeck probably your team.
The team's got your own Ozembeck now that you're all in there.
No, at least 15, so yeah.
I guess do you think about the people that you were with there?
And how do you connect the refugee story with these individuals?
You know?
I mean, you know, like being at a refugee is just like looking for a better future for
yourself and really, you know, being with it persecuted or just like fleeing a bad situation.
And I always think like, remember the moment I left Iced detention when I got released?
And the only feeling I could have is really crying about the people I left behind.
Because that was the first time I see the detention center from the outside.
And as I was walking, there were reporters there and they look behind me and I could see
they are, where we would have like the time out like there.
And I just got just like cry because like a minute before I was inside with them.
And you have a name too?
Like a lot of these people are nameless.
That's I mean, because like to me I had, I was very lucky, very privileged to have excellent
lawyers on my team.
Let's give it up for these guys.
What about Durg?
That hurts me because of someone like that.
Because most of them they don't even have one lawyer.
Like not even one lawyer.
And you know, I entered detention thinking that my case was the most devastating case.
You know, like, you know, my wife is pregnant.
She's going to give birth in one in one of two months and I'm not a fuse of any crime.
I'm a green card holder.
I was just being shipped from New York to Louisiana.
But in a day I was like, you know what, I'm lucky.
Like when I see all these fathers, we had a person who, his wife was also detained in a detention
center about two hours away from like Gina Louisiana, like where I was.
And for nine months they, they never met.
They were like literally two hours apart, like in two different.
But also they never had a direct phone call because you're not allowed to call another
detention center or another facility.
So I had, you know, to go back to my bureaucracy roots and drive to the, the facility.
There was like some rule and I told them like, you know, like I want to have a direct
phone call with my wife.
I haven't done that in nine months and they approved it and they gave him like a biweekly
one hour call with her.
So that was like maybe because that she's meant to get it.
You negotiated.
So I'm thinking you're working on a screenplay right now about Louisiana detention.
So sitcom you're saying, right?
You could say that.
Did you learn any Spanish?
Only the bad words.
Oh yeah.
It's just bust out some with it.
Pendejo.
I wouldn't.
So you know the cuss?
Not huge.
Have you ever called him little Marco?
Just like I feel like you're so like you're such a well-mannered individual.
Yeah.
I wouldn't go that low to be honest.
The only person I mean to be honest.
How low he is?
He's not that.
He's like five two.
He's not only a person that's Steven Miller because he's such a vicious.
Because he's bald.
Yeah.
I'm bald.
No, but he's been bald since seventh grade I heard.
That is a genesis of evil.
Honestly.
If I was bald seventh grade I would have I would have I would have wanted stalling
grott.
I think it's it's more that and grott.
It's beyond that.
It's just like you know, no, but you think about it.
You're 13 bald.
I'm not saying have any sympathy for Steven Miller, but I'm saying if your bought my friend
went to his high school, you know about what happened when he was defending the church.
He ran for student body president.
He got booed by the whole school.
This is you need to know this tea on the out here.
This is his main off.
So he he was like a it was like liberal Jewish Santa Monica in California.
Have you been to LA once?
Once, yeah.
All right.
Close about the experience.
What was it?
I ended up in that neighborhood.
So we wanted to go.
It's always good for three days and you look around the room.
You're like, everyone here's more on.
No, no, just like we we wanted to go.
I was with Nooran.
We wanted to go to a restaurant to have lunch to have dinner and we found that Persian
place and we went to like I had no reason not to go to that place.
And like we were while we were around the end of it, end of our dinner.
I could see like a couple of tables.
They are giving us like their to look.
But then they just stood up and just like starting chanting.
I'm as real high.
I'm as real.
Five minutes and they felt like so awkward.
Those guys they went into the encampment at UCLA.
Yeah.
So that was like crowdboys.
My ex, you know the same at Columbia like proud boys came to Columbia like for Israel.
Yeah, yeah.
That encampment like this like at the time with the encampment.
So yeah, it's so confusing these days, you know, you would assume that they don't like
Jews and then they put they like the killing ones.
Yeah, I don't know.
Where are the seats at the Persian restaurant leopard skin or like a kind of an animal print?
They like that.
They like it.
Yeah, it's just like you see the whole parking lot black BMWs.
No, I mean, it's so the start.
I have a lot of birds.
Because like some had to wait had to wait for me outside holding and it's very to flag
it out like they had it on hand.
I don't know like because you were a nerd and you went to college.
Yeah, this is like such bullshit.
You what do you want?
Like you want to be an American citizen and you want to live here with your child and
your wife.
Of course, that's why I came here like looking for stability for the first time I was like
looking forward to having like the green card the first permanent thing I have had.
And three like I was you know like right before my attention like and it's just so surreal
when I think about it because I was recently graduated.
I graduated graduating in December and we were waiting.
I have no idea how this is.
No, no, no, no.
I'm I'm I'm a bad like my undergraduate GPS 2.4.
Yeah, but you did computers.
Yeah, computer science.
Yeah, I would have gotten zero, but.
But I was literally like just waiting you know like preparing for the the arrival of Dean
going with no to doctor's appointment go trying strollers all across the city just to find that I.
Fucking expensive right there.
So you got to go Craigslist I think.
No, no, we went to Jersey like to get one line.
Oh, you got to go Jersey.
Yeah, but those might have lead pain or something.
Yeah.
I don't know.
You got to check.
So I wasn't that you know like just waiting to start my job first of April at the end.
Like everything is I was in Mexico like doing baby moon.
I know that was the first time I hit of that.
I don't know.
I mean, baby.
Apparently it's like the last trip you do before like before giving birth to a child.
So she's like feels terrible on a plane?
Yeah, so that was like when she was like seven months, which is like yeah, this is the last
trip we can have before.
Yeah, before going to the giving birth.
I was like I'm so.
She's like I'm just.
So we went to Mexico and they came back I think like a week or so before my my arrest and
then I was called up like you know Barnard is doesn't want to negotiate with the students.
Would you come to negotiate with Barnard?
I was like okay.
I don't have anything to do.
So so I went and that was like the second part of it.
And so as you said, you're one of 10 Palestinians students.
Yes, maybe.
I mean, there are like first second generation Palestinians.
Yes.
I was like less than five maybe Palestinians who lived, you know, the exile or even under
occupation.
And so is that you think when you think because they haven't presented any evidence, you
haven't had the trial yet where they say how you jeopardize the foreign policy of America.
They have not because they have nothing.
But like when they targeted you, what do you what do you consider to be the source of
that?
I mean look like if if if you've seen the video of my arrest, I was so calm because I I
knew I did nothing wrong.
I was like there's no way it's just a misunderstanding.
I'll be out and you know in an hour or two.
But when I was in federal plaza, federal 26, and I see the that was the first time they
give me the called NTA, the notice to appear.
And they see that the Secretary of State has determined that you are a foreign policy.
What is the what is the rubio?
No.
What's his name though?
Little little.
I mean, come on.
Just call him that.
So fun when Trump to.
But while I'm reading this, I hear the officer telling another the White House is requesting
an update.
It was like, well, well, well, you know, it was happening.
Trump was watching.
Yeah, like the White House is requesting an update.
And to me like literally at that point, like, well, I did just protesting and this is
the most American thing he would do in this country like to protest.
That's like what I'm like, you know, that's the first amendment.
Yes, the first amendment in America.
And they say the second is there to protect the one.
So it's like, you know, the second one is really important to us too.
But the first one, the first one is that's what I, you know, you're not shocked me because
like there wasn't like any crime.
I'm like, I committed like it wasn't that because in his determination, Rubio says that
his actions, although loful or otherwise loful, possess a foreign policy.
So like he sort of like conceded that all my actions were like, how would they know
and, and they came like it's, that's what we've been talking about about like, whether
you agree with me or not.
And I think you should agree with me.
But with it, what would not?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, genocide is bad.
I'm on the fence right now.
I'm a way.
That's why I was saying.
I'm going to see what the hell is shaking out.
But that's again, like if they can deport an anti-signist for his speech, they can deport
warriors, right?
Isn't that the, that's what the Republican Party is supposed to be about like, you know,
protecting free speech except for Palestine.
And that's like, even if what they are saying is right about me, which is not like it's
protected speech.
Yeah.
Assembly in speech.
Exactly.
Like, it's beyond that your Palestinian.
And it's, the protest is about a different house.
No, no, regardless of who I am, regardless of who I do.
Like again, like once again, like it's, it's just the idea of targeting someone for a
loful speech.
Yeah.
Like, whether it's like some people feel uncomfortable, whatever that is, like it's very
loful.
Well, I, what made a big impression on me when I was a kid shout out to you guys over
there.
You weren't there.
It was some other guys.
But like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Supreme Court case, I always
thought it was really cool that they were the American Nazi, but not the, no, I didn't
think that that was cool.
I thought the American, just for a background, the American Nazi party wanted to march in
the, which was a community with a lot of Holocaust survivors.
And I always thought it was really cool that there were like Jewish lawyers at the ACLU
that were representing the, the American Nazi party at the Supreme Court because like, because
in America, like in other countries, like in England, you go to jail for Facebook, you
know, like, I, there are like, we have higher ideals in principles.
Like, this is supposed to be one.
And it was always kind of a progressive kind of being a free speech warrior was never considered
a conservative topic.
I think what happened was we, in America, we had Charlottesville and it freaked people
out.
And I think that there was a revolution.
And I think they kind of seated it to the right.
Oh, God.
It's, we have a hell of a country.
Do you like, I don't know.
Do you like, like the NBA?
That's pretty good.
Have you seen movies?
Like, yeah.
Good fellows.
That's American.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's been a hell of a battle.
That's why I'm fighting my case, you know, because I believe in that premise.
I'm not saying like America is as perfect in any way and then there needs to be so much
things to do.
But that's the promise that the American dream of coming here and, you know, realizing what
you want.
We just say that's a Chinese people's story.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And meeting you and talking to you.
It's a testament to you to-
You're enjoying this?
I would make everything about-
I would make everything about my legal issues.
You know there's a comedian, Nor McDonnell,
who got cancer and just died, no one knew?
I was the most masculine thing I could imagine.
I would just be in Trader Joe's telling everyone,
my cancer, this line is too long.
I'm just saying you're like-
You're being a sweet, lovely person in the face of all this.
No, I mean, involved this is very-
Is a-
I don't know, it's a lovely thing to see in a shitty time.
No, I mean, I'm not the story again.
It's like the story is about the people being killed
using our tax dollars.
And the fact that I'm being-
You know, like our rights are being eroded right now.
Yeah.
And then I'm just being used as a pawn or an example.
Yeah, but-
You miss your kids' birth.
You're in the beginning.
Yeah, and nothing would make up for that.
I don't think like-
Yeah.
Winning my case or staying here.
You facetimes?
You like your facetimes?
No, no.
Like it was a day after that.
Like I-
I like-
Like we're able to talk to them on video.
But it was like very, very blurred.
Like, you know that ancient tablet that-
That's everything is blurred.
Tell us about meeting your son like-
You got that.
So the first time I met him actually was in detention, like behind a glass partition.
And the government refused that we would meet contact visit where we're allowed like to
be in the same room and they can't hold him.
He's a drug dealer.
Yeah.
He was cut up in smuggling.
That's horrible.
And that's like another, you know, level of the torture of these detention centers.
Because I'm-
To me I was lucky that I was able to see him for so many people around me.
Their family like couldn't even visit because they were either undocumented or afraid of
coming to hear or it's too far for them and too expensive.
But even to that level the government was-
Was terrible that they wouldn't allow me to have a contact visit with-
With my son.
So we had to literally go to a court to force the government to allow us have a one hour
contact visit that happened in a court room.
So the first time I hold Dean was in a court room.
He was one month old.
His first visit was from New York to Louisiana like a five hour flight.
And I still remember I had to go to the-
Like to ask the officer to get me some wipes or alcohol just like so I don't-
Oh yeah because he has a shot.
Yeah exactly.
And even like I did not-
I did not care to kiss him.
A dare to kiss him like at that point because I was just like worried that-
Because you know you're sharing that place with so many people with so little hygiene.
So and that's why like I would never-
I also like I would never-
Nothing would ever make up for that and it would never forgive them for-
Stepping me from this moment because it could have been-
Like could have been avoided.
Like in so many ways but to them the point is cruelty.
That's like the whole point of this administration of this like mass deportation campaign.
Because they want to break me and to decide to leave because to them like from first week
like if I decided to leave you can leave the country and just go.
So they they wanted to maintain that that cruelty so that I would be broken.
I think that's a good place to leave this.
I think you got this bro.
No I mean we got it.
You got this.
You're not going to be like telling the truth that college-
College people.
No I'm still-
I think it.
I got to get my dad's guy he works with is good.
Made off.
We got to get you some courage.
Yeah, like a slip-in-fall kind of guy.
Yeah, I know a personal injury.
I'm high school.
Thank you so much.
Amen.