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Family Struggles with Detained Graduate Student’s Absence During Child’s Birth

In New York, the wife of Mahmoud Khalil, a detained graduate student at Columbia University, has made serious allegations against federal immigration officials, claiming they denied her husband’s request to be present for the birth of their first child as a form of punishment.

Noor Abdalla expressed her distress in a statement following the birth of their baby boy on Monday, which occurred without her husband by her side. She stated that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rejected a request to temporarily release Khalil from a detention facility in Louisiana so that he could attend the birth in New York.

“This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer,” Abdalla remarked, consequently highlighting her husband’s ongoing detention as “unjust.”

Abdalla further accused ICE and the former Trump administration of stealing vital family moments, alleging this was an effort to silence Khalil’s activism regarding Palestinian rights.

Efforts to reach ICE for a response to these allegations were unsuccessful.

Khalil is a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and a dedicated graduate student who previously served as a spokesperson for campus activists during significant protests at Columbia University last year. These protests were aimed at addressing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The federal government has labeled Khalil as a potential national security threat. Recently, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that the government’s claims regarding Khalil’s presence in the U.S. could lead to “potentially serious foreign policy consequences,” which met the criteria for his deportation.

Khalil’s legal counsel has announced plans to appeal the ruling to the Board of Immigration Appeals, seeking to challenge this decision and secure Khalil’s return to his family.

Source
www.yahoo.com