The 8-month pregnant wife of pro-Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil has pled for her husband’s release in time for the birth of their baby, following his arrest and detention by federal immigration officers over the weekend.
“I urge you to see Mahmoud through my eyes as a loving husband and the future father to our baby. I need your help to bring Mahmoud home, so he is here beside me, holding my hand in the delivery room as we welcome our first child into this world,” she told Newsweek in a statement issued via her husband’s attorney, Amy E. Greer.
“Please release Mahmoud now,” said his wife, who was not named by the lawyer when asked by Newsweek or in legal papers filed Sunday in challenge of Khalil’s detention.
Syrian-born Khali, a permanent U.S. resident and Columbia University graduate, played a key role in last year’s Gaza war protests at the Ivy League’s campus in New York City.
He was arrested in the city on Saturday and transferred more than 1,000 miles away to the Central Louisiana Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center.
A federal judge on Monday halted the Trump administration’s attempt to deport Khalil.
President Donald Trump, who has pledged to crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses, has called the arrest “the first arrest of many to come.”
About 3,000 protesters demonstrated Khalil’s detention in Lower Manhattan on Monday afternoon, police said.
This breaking news story will be updated.