Mahmoud Khalil, the detained Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, was not allowed to hold his newborn son after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials refused to allow a contact visit between him and his family, his lawyers said on Wednesday.
Instead, Khalil, 30, was forced to meet his month-old baby for the first time behind glass, after his wife, Noor Abdalla, traveled from New York to the Louisiana detention facility where he has been detained since March, his legal team said.
Ice officials and a private prison contractor denied the family’s request for a contact visit, citing the detention center’s no-contact visitation policy and unspecified “security concerns”, lawyers said.
Abdalla, a US citizen who gave birth to their first child last month while Khalil was in detention, said she was “furious at the cruelty and inhumanity of this system that dares to call itself just”.
“After flying over a thousand miles to Louisiana with our newborn son, his very first flight, all so his father could finally hold him in his arms, Ice has denied us even this most basic human right,” she said in a statement.
TVNL Comment: Mamoud Khalil has NOT BEEN CHARGED with any crime. He was detained illegally and remains imprisoned by the Trump regime. This highly respected academic will prevail in the courts, but this act against him and his wife and child is an example of Israel's control over US politics.
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