How Mahmoud Khalil’s Case Brings Family Separation into Focus

In a Louisiana Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, Mahmoud Khalil remained confined as his wife gave birth to their son on Monday—over 1,000 miles away from the hospital room where he would have been standing. The separation wasn’t due to logistical impossibility but a denied request for temporary release, highlighting what some experts describe as a pattern of using family separation as leverage against specific communities.

“This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer,” Dr. Noor Abdalla said in a statement the day she gave birth. “My son and I should not be navigating his first days on earth without Mahmoud.”

Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, was arrested on March 8th following his participation in campus protests against the war in Gaza. His subsequent placement in ICE custody made his deportment case the most prominent in the new Trump administration. But advocates say that keeping Khalil from the birth of his son adds familiar, and cruel, elements from the president’s first term.

Though Khalil’s case is still unfolding, his situation echoes a history of family separation policies that created a major scandal in the first Trump administration, and appears to have blended with the President’s track record of hostility toward Muslims, according to experts. Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy enforced family separations at the Mexican border in 2018, a year after the newly installed President imposed a “Muslim ban,” a series of policies and executive orders preventing families from seven predominantly Muslim countries from, among other things, reuniting on American soil.

“ Family separation in particular is a very cruel policy tool that the Trump administration has relied on in both of his administrations,” says Yasmine Taeb, a human rights lawyer and progressive strategist who worked to undo the 2017 travel bans. “ In the case of Mahmoud Khalil, there’s a reason he was sent to a detention center notorious for abuse thousands of miles away from his support system, from his wife, and now his newborn baby.”

She pointed to other prominent cases: Rumeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national and Fulbright scholar pursuing her Ph.D. at Tufts University, was arrested by plainclothes ICE agents on March 25, 2025, near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her detention followed the revocation of her student visa due to her part in pro-Palestinian activism, specifically co-authoring an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper, according to the U.S. State Department. Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University, was detained by ICE on April 14, 2025, during his naturalization interview in Colchester, Vermont. Mahdawi, who had organized pro-Palestinian protests on campus, became a legal permanent resident of the U.S. in 2015.

“ The fact that Mahmoud, Mohsen, Rumeysa, and other students have been targeted simply for advocating for Palestinian rights should alarm and scare all of us,” Taeb said.

The Trump Administration has repeatedly equated pro-Palestinian activism with anti-semitism—an equation challenged by the participation of Jewish students and activists among those protesting Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war. The war was sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that resulted in 1,200 deaths and the kidnapping of more than 200 hostages; Israel’s retaliatory strikes have claimed more than 50,000 lives, a majority of them civilian, according to the figures from Hamas-controlled Palestinian health authorities called reliable by the U.S. and U.N.

Muslims in the U.S. are wary not only of being cast as scapegoats, but of what can come with it. In the months following the September 11 attacks, hundreds of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian men were detained, some in what the Department of Justice later described as “unduly harsh” conditions. Many families had no information about their loved ones’ whereabouts for weeks or months, worsened by communication blackouts that prevented contact via phone, mail or visiting.

Beyond the political dimensions, family separation inflicts profound psychological harm, according to mental health professionals.

“To be kept from your newborn child not by choice but by systemic barriers is a unique kind of heartbreak,” says Muna Egeh, a supervised intern psychotherapist for Ruh Care, an online therapy service focused on Muslim clients. “For Mahmoud Khalil, this isn’t just about immigration policy; it’s about missing a sacred, once-in-a-lifetime moment. The emotional toll of such separation can leave lasting wounds, not only for the parent but for the child whose first days begin without their father’s presence.”

In Khalil’s case, immigration authorities had discretion to grant temporary humanitarian release—a practice regularly employed for circumstances like family births or deaths—but chose not to exercise.

“ICE’s cruelty is boundless,” said Baher Azmy, Legal Director of the Center of Constitutional Rights and attorney for Khalil. “Its small-minded refusal to grant Mahmoud and Noor the most basic human gesture, to care for each other in this pivotal life moment, is an extension of their vindictive and arbitrary decision to arrest and attempt to deport him. The humanity of Mahmoud and his family will, in the end, be what we all remember.”