Mahmoud Khalil squinted in the afternoon sun as he walked away from the fences topped with razor wire, through two tall gates and out into the thick humidity of central Louisiana.
After more than three months detained in this remote and notorious immigration detention center in the small town of Jena, he described a bittersweet feeling of release, walking towards a handful of journalists with a raised fist, visibly relieved, but composed and softly spoken.
“Although justice prevailed, it’s very long overdue and this shouldn’t have taken three months,” he said, after a federal judge in New Jersey compelled the Trump administration to let him leave detention as his immigration case proceeds.
“I leave some incredible men behind me, over one thousand people behind me, in a place where they shouldn’t have been,” he said. “I hope the next time I will be in Jena is to actually visit.”
Flanked by two lawyers, and speaking at a roadside framed by the detention center in the backdrop, he told the Guardian how his 104 days in detention had changed him and his politics.
“The moment you enter this facility, your rights leave you behind,” he said.
He pointed to the sprawling facility now behind him.
“Once you enter there, you see a different reality,” he said. “Just a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and liberty and justice. Once you cross, literally that door, you see the opposite side of what happens on this country.”
Khalil is the most high profile of the students arrested and detained by the Trump administration for their pro-Palestinian activism. He was the final one left in detention, following an arrest that saw him snatched from his Columbia apartment building in New York.
The Trump administration has labelled Khalil a national security threat and invoked rarely used powers of the secretary of state under immigration law to seek his removal. The administration has fought vigorously to keep Khalil detained and continues to push for his removal from the US.
Asked by the Guardian what his response to these allegations were, Khalil replied: “Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this. That doesn’t mean there is a right person for this. There is no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide.”
He spoke briefly of his excitement of seeing his newborn son for the first time away from the supervision of the Department of Homeland security. The baby was born while Khalil was held in detention. He looked forward to their first hug in private. He looked forward to seeing his wife, who had been present at the time of his arrest.
He smiled briefly.
And then he turned back towards, ready to take him on the first leg of a journey back home.
