Mahmoud Khalil launched his memoir, “No Land to Stand On,” before a packed crowd at Book Culture near Columbia University on Monday night, in what human rights lawyer Steven Donziger described as “a major literary and political triumph.”
Donziger, who won a $9 billion verdict against Chevron as a human rights lawyer, interviewed Khalil at the event and offered a blunt assessment of what the book documents.
“It documents one of the more shameful chapters in modern US history,” Donziger said.
The memoir recounts Khalil’s arrest by ICE agents at his apartment building on March 9, 2025, and his subsequent detention at a Louisiana facility for 104 days. The Palestinian activist, who was born in a refugee camp in Syria, fled that country at 18, holds Algerian citizenship, and is a lawful permanent resident of the United States married to an American citizen. No criminal charges were filed against him.
Donziger described Khalil’s treatment as an abduction for purely political reasons.
“Mahmoud was in many respects the first person abducted for purely political reasons by Trump’s shock troops off the streets of America,” Donziger said. “He did nothing wrong; no crime was even alleged. He’s married to an American and was here lawfully.”
The event drew a standing-room-only crowd at the bookstore just off the Columbia campus, where Khalil had been a graduate student at the School of International and Public Affairs. He became a prominent figure during the 2024 student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, serving as a negotiator between demonstrators and university administrators.
Donziger, who met Khalil in 2024 when the student asked him for informal advice during those negotiations, described watching Columbia’s leadership turn on its own students.
“We met a handful of times as we slowly watched the once-proud institution of Columbia abandon its academic mission and become complicit in Trump’s attacks on its own students,” Donziger said. “The same administrators who had sat across the table from Mahmoud as negotiators betrayed him.”
Khalil has filed two lawsuits. One names senior Trump administration officials including Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, along with private organizations including the Heritage Foundation, Betar, and Canary Mission, alleging a conspiracy to target him for his speech. The other names Columbia University and several administrators, alleging the school failed to protect Palestinian students and that its “deliberate indifference” laid the groundwork for his arrest.
“Accountability is near,” Donziger said. “Mahmoud has filed two brilliant lawsuits that need public support.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used provision of immigration law to justify Khalil’s detention, arguing his presence compromised U.S. foreign policy interests. A federal judge ordered Khalil’s release in June 2025, but the administration continues fighting to deport him. The case is expected to reach the Supreme Court.
Donziger described the book’s publication as an act of resistance in itself.
“Just getting this book out when the entire US government is trying to silence you is a monumental triumph of the human spirit,” he said. “His struggle against this injustice — including months detained by ICE under horrid conditions — is a blueprint for how to get through repression with strength, grace, and dignity.”
The New York Times called the memoir “a quietly shattering” account with prose that is “matter-of-fact and unadorned, noticeably free of self-pity.” The New Republic described it as “not a story of stoic heroism but of constant estimation (and sometimes underestimation) of risk and the decision to accept it as the price of doing the right thing.”
Donziger urged readers to help the book find a wider audience.
“Let’s help Mahmoud flip the script even more and drive this to the top of the NYT bestseller list,” he said.
“No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention” was released Sept. 29 by Metropolitan Books. Khalil wrote much of the book from a diary he kept while detained at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana.
“This book is about a story of so many incredible men, fathers and workers who came here seeking safety and a better future, only to be snatched off the street,” Khalil told Democracy Now!
Arrest and detention
Khalil, a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Syria, fled the country at 18 and holds Algerian citizenship. He studied computer science at Lebanese American University, worked with Syrian refugees in Lebanon and served as programs manager at the British Embassy in Beirut before moving to the United States in 2022 to attend Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
He became a prominent figure during the 2024 campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, serving as a negotiator between student demonstrators and university administrators.
On March 9, 2025, ICE agents arrested Khalil in the lobby of his apartment building. He was transferred to Louisiana, nearly 1,300 miles from his wife, Noor Abdalla, a U.S. citizen who was eight months pregnant at the time.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used provision of immigration law allowing the deportation of noncitizens whose presence is deemed to compromise U.S. foreign policy interests. No criminal charges were filed against Khalil.
Khalil spent 104 days in detention. He missed the birth of his son, Deen, listening to his wife give birth over a payphone.
“Every time I try to remember that moment I’m speechless, because I should have been free at home with my newborn son,” he told NPR. “That’s why I’m really now fighting all this, because I can never forgive those who stripped that moment from me.”
A federal judge ordered his release in June 2025, but the administration has continued its efforts to deport him. The case is expected to reach the Supreme Court.
‘A stain on the U.S. consciousness’
In the memoir, Khalil describes conditions inside the detention facility, including overcrowding, constant lighting and a lack of privacy. He shared a space with more than 70 other men.
“What is happening behind ICE detention gates is horrendous,” he told NPR. “It is a stain on the U.S. consciousness.”
Khalil told Senate Judiciary Committee staff during a visit that the facility was so cold that detainees hung plastic bags between bunks for insulation, but guards removed them as a “security risk.”
“The moment you walk into Jena, your rights remain outside,” Khalil told committee staff.
Legal battles
Khalil has filed multiple lawsuits. In July 2026, he sued senior Trump administration officials — including Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio — along with the Heritage Foundation, Betar and Canary Mission, alleging a conspiracy between private actors and government officials to target him for his speech. The lawsuit invokes the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
He also filed a $20 million claim alleging false imprisonment and malicious prosecution over his detention.
In September 2026, Khalil sued Columbia University, alleging the school failed to protect Palestinian students from harassment and doxxing and that its “deliberate indifference” laid the groundwork for his arrest.
“For over two years, we pleaded with Columbia, and Columbia did not care,” Khalil said in a statement. “Our safety and wellbeing did not serve the ideological project its Board of Trustees was protecting, so they traded us away.”
A memoir of resistance
The book draws on Khalil’s detention diary while also telling the multigenerational story of his family’s expulsion from Palestine and displacement through Syria and Lebanon.
The New York Times called it “a quietly shattering memoir,” describing Khalil’s prose as “matter-of-fact and unadorned, noticeably free of self-pity.” The New Republic described it as “not a story of stoic heroism but of constant estimation (and sometimes underestimation) of risk and the decision to accept it as the price of doing the right thing.”
Pankaj Mishra, author of “The World After Gaza,” compared the memoir to classics of dissident literature, calling it “a true peer of Nadezhda Mandelstam’s ‘Hope Against Hope’ and Eugenia Ginzburg’s ‘Journey into the Whirlwind.’”
Despite his experience, Khalil says he remains a “firm believer” in the rule of law and in the United States.
“This administration is trying to portray me as someone who is violent, someone who hates this country,” he told NPR. “It is the total opposite, actually.”
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