Mahmoud Khalil says he still watches his back every day, one year after ICE arrested him and set off a legal fight that has kept his life in New York under a shadow. In a new essay in the current issue of New York Magazine, the 31-year-old graduate of Columbia University wrote that he has been “made into a symbol against my will.”
Khalil, a Syrian national born to Palestinian parents, was arrested by ICE in March 2025 and detained for 104 days before he was freed last June, after what he described as “an army of lawyers sued the administration.” Earlier this month, an immigration board denied his latest appeal to dismiss the case, which accuses him of fraud on his green card application. He has kept speaking publicly as the case moves ahead, even as the pressure around him has intensified.
In the essay, titled “I Miss My Old Life,” Khalil said he misses “attending events at Columbia or meeting friends on Low Steps.” He wrote that he no longer takes carefree strolls through Times Square or Washington Square Park and now rides the subway daily because he cannot afford a cab every day. On the train, he said, he hides behind sunglasses and a baseball cap. He also said he regrets eating at a restaurant without first Googling it to get a “sense of the political temperament of the space.”
The account captures how detention has followed Khalil into ordinary routines. He wrote that at one restaurant, a group of customers sang “Am Yisrael Chai” over his table for two minutes. The line is striking not just for the insult, but for the way it reflects how public he has become since his arrest, which turned him into a cause for both supporters and critics.
Khalil was a lead organizer of Columbia’s Apartheid Divest group, which the article says explicitly called for the “total eradication of Western civilization.” His case was part of President Trump’s executive orders “combating antisemitism,” and the publication says he has also been a guest of Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion during Ramadan. For Khalil, the fight has moved far beyond Columbia. He is trying to live a normal New York life while his legal case, and the attention around it, remain unresolved.
