Mahmoud Khalil Locks In Memoir Deal as Detention Ruling Looms

Anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil, waiting on an appeals court ruling that could cut short his press tour and send him back to immigration detention, has locked in his next payday — a memoir deal with Metropolitan Books.The book, titled “No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention,” is set for publication on January 12, Politico reported Wednesday. The memoir will center on Mr. Khalil’s role as a leader of Columbia University’s anti-Israel encampment movement and his subsequent detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.“I began this book while in detention and I finished it fighting a deportation order that may take me from my family. That is what it has cost me to tell this story,” Mr. Khalil told Politico. The deal comes as the full Third Circuit Court of Appeals considers whether to overturn a January ruling by a three-judge panel that opened the door for the government to return Mr. Khalil to detention. That panel reversed a federal district court decision from last summer that had ordered Mr. Khalil freed from ICE custody while his immigration case played out.The appeals court stopped short of addressing the constitutionality of the government’s detention efforts, holding instead that the district court lacked jurisdiction. His legal team appealed, bringing the matter before the full circuit.Mr. Khalil is also fighting deportation in immigration court. He suffered a setback in April when the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected his legal team’s bid to dismiss the case and issued a final order of removal.Mr. Khalil, who was born in Syria but holds Algerian citizenship, was arrested by immigration officers in March after the State Department revoked his visa and green card. The 31-year-old graduated in December with a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and served as one of the ringleaders of the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas student encampment movement that roiled Columbia after October 7, 2023.The state department initially justified the administration’s deportation of Mr. Khalil by calling up a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the government to deport non-citizens who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The administration has since sought to deport him based on allegations that he committed immigration fraud by lying on his green card application about his employment history, namely his involvement in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a UN group accused of aiding Hamas and employing people who participated in the October 7 massacre.Following his release in June, Mr. Khalil returned to his anti-Israel activism, embarking on a press tour, appearing at pro-Palestinian protests, and meeting with sympathetic politicians including Senator Bernie Sanders and Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Mahmoud Khalil Locks In Memoir Deal as Detention Ruling Looms

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