April 22 (UPI) — Noor Abdalla, the wife of detained Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, announced the birth of their son on Monday.
Abdalla, a U.S. citizen, said in a statement that she gave birth without Khalil present despite requests for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to allow him to witness it, NBC News reported.
“This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud and our son suffer,” she said.
According to emails reviewed by CNN and The New York Times, Abdalla went into labor Sunday, eight days earlier than expected. Her attorneys had requested a two-week humanitarian furlough for Khalil so he could attend the birth of his son.
The attorneys said they and Khalil would agree to any conditions, including wearing a GPS ankle monitor, but the request was rejected by Melissa Harper, director of the New Orleans ICE field office, about an hour after it was made.
“My son and I should not be navigating his first days on Earth without Mahmoud,” Abdalla, a Michigan-born dentist, said in her statement Monday. “ICE and the Trump administration have stolen these precious moments from our family in an attempt to silence Mahmoud’s support for Palestinian freedom.”
Khalil, a Palestinian refugee who is a legal permanent resident with a green card, was arrested by ICE agents on March 8 over his involvement in pro-Palestine protests that had erupted on Columbia’s Manhattan campus last year.
The Trump administration has accused him of supporting Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization, including through his protest work.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described Khalil’s presence and activities in the United States as creating “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the nation.
Earlier this month, a federal immigration judge ruled that Khalil, despite being a legal permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen, can be deported.
Khalil was arrested as the Trump administration has sought to crack down on foreign-born students who have publicly supported Palestinians and criticized Israel over its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Hundreds of people have had their student visas revoked while some have also been arrested — seemingly over their political speech, attracting criticism from human rights and immigration advocates.
While acknowledging a country’s right to revoke visas under U.S. laws, the American Immigration Lawyers Association lambasted the Trump administration for arresting students shortly after revoking their visas on unknown grounds.
“These arrests and detentions, often at the hands of masked plainclothes officers, are terrifying and chilling,” AILA President Kelli Stump said in a statement earlier this month.
“Such black-ops tactics, used against people who are not trying to evade any law, have absolutely no place in our country. Many of these individuals appear to be students who have merely exercised their Constitutional right to free speech, whether by writing opinion pieces or peacefully protesting, and should not be targeted for deportation without any due process, have their liberty taken away and detained in harsh, inhumane conditions in jails far away from their homes.”
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war.