Still held in a Louisiana detention center for the crime of denouncing the slaughter and starvation of Gazan children, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil told a judge Thursday his deportation would likely mean death for him and his family. His testimony came hours after Khalil finally got to hold his one-month-old son Deen for the first time - in a surreal victory, without plexiglass - after a legal battle against "the calculated cruelty" of a malignant regime that had argued a father-son meeting would be "unsafe."

An Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent born in a refugee camp in Syria, Khalil became a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and earned his master's degree in international studies at Columbia last year before becoming the first Gaza protester arrested under a promised crackdown. Abducted in March by ICE and charged under an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, he was alleged by Marco Rubio to pose "adverse foreign policy consequences" despite virtually no evidence and no charge of a crime. One of the few protesters still in detention - several others were released as their cases play out - he missed the April birth of his first child - request denied - and his graduation this week while his case winds its way through immigration and federal courts.

Kahlil's attorneys have persistently argued their client is the target of "egregious government misconduct," from his arrest without a warrant by masked, unnamed ICE agents who falsely claimed he was "a flight risk" to ongoing efforts by regime lawyers to slow down his habeas corpus case against deportation before an independent federal judge while fast-tracking court proceedings before government-beholden immigration judges to remove him. The entire so-called case against him, argues one of his lawyers, is simply "an unsuccessful attempt to silence people who speak up in defense of Palestinian human rights,” part of the vast and illegal overreach of a regime that's "presented no evidence in support of its baseless rhetoric.”

At Thursday's hearing, Judge Jamee Comans denied a motion by his attorneys to end deportation proceedings and sought to determined if he's entitled to relief from that threat, possibly through asylum. Testifying for two hours, Khalil described his early life, journey to Columbia and campus activism as a prominent pro-Palestinian voice at last year's protests. "I spent a good part of my life fleeing from harm and advocating for the marginalized," he said. "That is what I was protesting, that is what I will continue to protest. This is what everyone should protest.” He also said "having been falsely labelled a terrorist or Hamas supporter (has) put a target on my back wherever I go." His deportation, he fears, would lead to kidnapping, assassination, torture or targeting of his family.

His attorneys agreed Khalil's "life is at stake" if he was deported to "incredibly volatile" Syria or Algeria, where "Israel has a well-known history of assassinating pro-Palestinian intellectuals." They called experts on the Middle East and North Africa to verify the risks he'd face due to his visibility and false charges against him; they also had Columbia faculty and students, some Jewish, attest to Khalil's character as "an upstanding, principled and well-respected member of our community," "a diplomat in every sense," "a peacekeeper." Finally, they offered new video evidence contradicting claims Khalil was a "flight risk"; at his arrest, he made no attempt to flee or repel the thugs confronting him. Comans didn't issue a ruling but gave lawyers until June 2 to submit closing arguments.

Attending the hearing were Khalil's wife Dr. Noor Abdalla, a dentist and U.S. citizen, and Deen; both traveled nearly 1,500 miles so Deen could meet his father. In a grim microcosm embodying MAGA's hateful, stupid, knee-jerk sadism, for days the acting head of ICE in New Orleans had denied the request for a family visit, arguing it would be "unsafe" to allow them "into a secured part of the facility” because, you know, possible smuggled binkies. Wednesday night, Kahlil's lawyers had to take the inanely spiteful issue to Michael Farbiarz, a federal judge in New Jersey reviewing their appeal to Louisiana's approval for deportation; after Farbiarz ruled yes of course ICE goons must allow it, the goons tried to insist - sociopaths gonna sociopath - father and son be separated by a Plexiglass barrier.

His lawyers rightly blasted the move as "further evidence of the retaliatory motive behind Mr Khalil’s arrest and faraway detention.” They also noted his wife and son were "the farthest thing from a security risk," called Khalil's chance to "hold his newborn child for the first time (a) bittersweet moment," and asserted how sad and ridiculous it was "we had to go to court to get that." Ultimately, happily, they did; a few hours later, in the courtroom, every time the sleeping Keen gurgled or squawked, Khalil turned and smiled. Later, Abdalla called the obstruction "not just heartless (but) deliberate violence (by a) government that tears families apart without remorse," a painful echo of "the stories of Palestinian families torn apart by Israeli prisons and bombs, denied dignity, denied life.”

In an earlier letter to his son from detention - "Writing to you with all the love in my heart" - Mahmoud also viewed his plight as part of a larger, too-long "struggle for Palestinian liberation" he described as "not a burden (but) a duty and an honor we carry with pride." "I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharingthis experience," he wrote. "My heart aches that I could not hold you in my arms and hear your first cry...But my absence is not unique. Like other Palestinian fathers, this pain is part of daily life for fathers taken by war, by bombs, by prison cells and by the cold machinery of occupation. The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations."

At Columbia’s graduation this week, president Claire Shipman was booed when she conceded students were "mourning" Khalil's absence. The Sunday before, Abdalla spoke at an alternative People's Graduation for him and other students punished for protests. The 2018 commencement speaker at University of Michigan and the day's guest of honor, she pinned on one of dozens of fabric scraps with names of Palestinians killed in Gaza before going onstage. "I was not supposed to be standing here today. Mahmoud was,” she said with emotion. "To the students here, you spoke when silence was the easier choice." After Edward Said’s daughter Najla handed her a diploma on behalf of Mahmoud, she left early, holding Deen. He wore a tiny cap and gown inscribed with, "They tried to bury us but they did not know we are seeds.”

After Khalil's request for a family visit at the Louisiana hearing was first denied by regime miscreants, his lawyers filed an appeal. In response to their determination to do right by their client and democracy itself, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin sneered, "Mahmoud Kahlil should use the CBP Home app to self-deport." She added, "The United States is offering illegal aliens (he's a permanent resident) $1,000 apiece and free flights, which Kahlil can take advantage of." Retorted ACLU and Khalil attorney Brian Hauss, "McLaughlin and her boss Kristi Noem should try reading the Constitution." On the other side of the world, Pope Leo XIV earlier voiced his own revulsion at their cruelty. "Do you not see the suffering?" he asked. "Is your conscience not disturbed?"