A Columbia University graduate facing deportation over his participation in pro-Palestinian campus protests detailed the personal and professional toll of his continued detention. In a court statement 30-year-old Mahmoud Khalil, a legal US resident originally from Syria, said he suffered “irreparable harm” during months in federal immigration custody in Louisiana. Mahmoud Khalil said, “Instead of holding my wife’s hand in the delivery room, I was crouched on a detention center floor, whispering through a crackling phone line as she labored alone. When I heard my son’s first cries, I buried my face in my arms so no one would see me weep.” Mahmoud Khalil was arrested on March 8 by immigration agents in the lobby of his university-owned apartment- marking the first known arrest under the Donald Trump administration’s widening crackdown on students participating in campus demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza. Job Offer Lost, Family Under Pressure The former student revealed that Oxfam International rescinded a job offer following his arrest, which he said could prove “career-ending.” “As someone who fled persecution in Syria for my political beliefs, I never imagined I’d end up in immigration detention in the United States,” Mahmoud Khalil wrote, adding, “Why should protesting the Israeli government’s indiscriminate killing of thousands of innocent Palestinians result in the erosion of my constitutional rights?” In response, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin suggested that Mahmoud Khalil could simply self-deport. Mahmoud Khalil, however, holds a green card.