New York, NY — In response to the news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested and detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University, Silky Shah, Executive Director of Detention Watch Network, issued the following statement:
“ICE’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil should alarm every single one of us. Suppression of dissent is a key tactic of the Trump regime, and now Trump is ramping up the targeting of activists to silence political opposition. This is a clear example of the rise of authoritarianism and undermining of democratic values under Trump, and we must call it out and denounce it swiftly.
Tragically, Khalil’s arrest has taken him from New York to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center (Jena) in Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles away from his 8-month pregnant wife. This is a feature, not a flaw of the detention system: ICE operates within a culture of secrecy, obscuring abuses and purposefully transferring people from detention center to detention center to disconnect them from their loved ones and community support. The immigration detention system is rife with abuse, tears apart families, and is fundamentally inhumane and unjust. Jena in particular, has a long history of abuse. It has been the site of numerous hunger strikes, most recently in March 2023 when 300 immigrants in custody protested abusive treatment, deplorable conditions, fatal medical neglect and a lack of due process rights.
Many people are surprised to learn that immigrants in detention can be undocumented or documented immigrants, including people who are legal permanent residents, visa holders, or those whose immigration status is not current, expired or is under review. What we are seeing now is that Trump is changing the scope of what is considered ‘criminal’ in order to target and detain more people, particularly those who oppose his agenda. This is why we must fight for all people - whether they’ve been incarcerated or have had contact with the criminal legal system, or are merely undocumented. When you accept that some people are deserving of detention and deportation, the scope of who is eligible is always under threat of expanding.”
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.