AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Officials in Gaza say Israeli attacks have killed over 300 Palestinians over the past 48 hours. One strike on the home of the renowned cardiologist Marwan al-Sultan at Indonesian Hospital killed the doctor, along with his mother, sister and aunt. He’s at least the 70th healthcare worker killed by Israel in the past 50 days.

This comes as Palestinians say at least 33 people were slaughtered today as they lined up for aid at militarized aid distribution sites run by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The reportedly unprovoked killings came as the Associated Press published recent video showing U.S. contractors at GHF sites firing live ammunition and stun grenades at starving Palestinians as they scrambled for food. The AP says it received the footage from two U.S. contractors who wish to remain anonymous in order to blow the whistle on abuses. The contractors report security staffers were often unqualified, unvetted, heavily armed, and seemed to have an open license to do whatever they wished. In this clip published by the AP, contractors erupt in cheers as shots ring out.

JULIA FRANKEL: At that moment, bursts of gunfire erupt close by, at least 15 shots.

U.S. CONTRACTOR 1: I think you hit one.

U.S. CONTRACTOR 1: Hell, yeah, boy!

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrators, especially at universities across the United States. In a moment, we’ll be joined by the first pro-Palestinian campus protester to be jailed by the Trump administration: Columbia University graduate and Palestinian student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil. Video shows his arrest on March 8th, when he was detained by plainclothes officers who did not identify themselves. The video was filmed by his eight-month-pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla, whose voice you’re hearing in this clip.

DR. NOOR ABDALLA: Can you — can you please specify what agency is taking him, please? Excuse me. They’re — nobody — they’re not talking to me. I don’t know. Excuse me, the lawyer would like to speak to somebody. Oh my god, they’re literally running away from me.

AMY GOODMAN: That was March. Mahmoud Khalil has now reunited with his wife and newborn son, after he was released on bail less than two weeks ago by a federal judge following over 100 days in a Louisiana ICE jail. Khalil spoke outside the jail in Jena, Louisiana, when he was freed.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: No one is illegal. No human is illegal. That’s the message. The message is: Justice will prevail, no matter what this administration may try to portray.

AMY GOODMAN: Two weeks ago, on Saturday, Democracy Now! was at Newark Airport when Mahmoud Khalil was reunited with his wife and his son.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: I just want to go back and just continue the work that I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights, a speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished, as this administration wants to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Mahmoud Khalil was standing next to the New York Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

On Sunday, the following day, the Palestinian student leader, now graduate of Columbia University, stood next to his wife, Noor Abdalla, and addressed over a thousand supporters, as well as the press, on the Upper West Side outside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine here in Manhattan, blocks from his campus of Columbia University.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: I would like to salute the courage of all the students at Columbia and across the nation, these students who continue to protest. I want to honor especially my friends at Columbia University, especially those who are currently battling expulsion and suspension for their consciousness stand.

AMY GOODMAN: Mahmoud Khalil is lawful permanent resident green card holder who has not been charged with any crimes, yet he was held in a Jena, Louisiana, ICE jail for 104 days.

This all comes amidst growing calls for Israel to be held accountable for alleged war crimes in Gaza, including attacks on hospitals.

Mahmoud Khalil joins us now for his first live global broadcast since his release.

Mahmoud, welcome to Democracy Now!

MAHMOUD KHALIL: Thanks, Amy. Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to start with the same question I asked you at the airport: How does it feel to be free?

MAHMOUD KHALIL: I mean, absolutely, it goes without saying, it feels — it feels good just to be reunited with the family and with my baby son. But at the same time, it feels difficult watching the Palestinian people, like, massacred, being massacred right now in Gaza. And this really adds more responsibility on me to continue advocating for the rights of the Palestinians.

And this is what we should focus on right now, because my freedom is nothing compared to the suffering that the Palestinian people are going through right now in Palestine. And this is what the message should be, that whether it’s my arrest, whether the focus right now on immigration, it’s just like a distraction of what’s really happening in Palestine, that this administration is investing and funding war crimes in Gaza, that this administration is unconditionally supporting Israel, whether politically or militarily. This is what we should focus on rather than individual cases, I believe.

AMY GOODMAN: Mahmoud, I’m wondering if you can take us back to March 8th, that day when you were taken by Homeland Security or federal agents. I don’t even know — at this point, do you know who it is that you were taken by? And what happened on that day, where you were?

MAHMOUD KHALIL: Yeah, so, the Trump administration basically illegally ripped me away from my family, because they are simply trying to silence anyone speaking out against Israel atrocities against the Palestinians. The officers or the agents who kidnapped me did not introduce themselves. They said at first it’s police, then DHS, without giving any details, without even presenting an arrest warrant, which is the most basic thing that any law enforcement — any law enforcement should do in a country that proclaims justice and due process, which unfortunately did not happen. So, they basically kidnapped me and, for more than 30 hours, kept moving me from one place to another, literally moving me more than 1,400 miles across the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Can I ask you something? One of the men who abducted you in your Columbia University housing, is it true that he was the Homeland Security agent who was honored by President Trump in his first term in office, Elvin Hernandez?

MAHMOUD KHALIL: To be honest, I don’t have concrete information about that. It has been only two weeks since my release. I —

AMY GOODMAN: And you didn’t know at the time who he —

MAHMOUD KHALIL: Inside, I didn’t have access to internet.

AMY GOODMAN: You didn’t know at the time who these men were.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: I didn’t.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I mean —

MAHMOUD KHALIL: No, no, I didn’t. Like, to be honest, the story that the government presented was once over — one time over another changed to sort of serve their part of the story. At the beginning, they said, “Well, we had an arrest warrant, and we arrested Mahmoud outside of Columbia, of his Columbia residence.” But then, when we presented the video evidence, they said, “Oh, he tried to flee.” So, these agents are trained to lie, are trained to just instigate violence with those who they are seeking to detain.

AMY GOODMAN: So, we have played over and over the video of your wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, on the phone with the lawyer, desperately trying to figure out what was happening and where you were being taken. In fact, can you talk about when you had emailed the president of Columbia University, Dr. Armstrong at the time, because you were so concerned about what was happening to you? You wanted some kind of protection.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: Yeah. I mean, ICE, ICE acts as Trump’s militia arm. That’s the way that now they are functioning. And we can see this evident not only in my case, in just like cases across the country.

In the weeks leading up to my arrest, I noticed a more vicious, coordinated smear campaign against me online, the same — the same accounts mentioning Rubio, the White House, mentioning also, like, just baseless claims about Mahmoud Khalil, who he is, like an international student, a Hamas agent and all these labels. So, I felt that since I didn’t have any legal, at that point, representation, I wanted, like, Columbia first to protect me, because these actors are Columbia students and faculty, the ones who were waging this smear campaign against me online and calling for the administration to deport me. So, this is the minimum that Columbia should have done, is to protect the students against these hostile actors. So, and that was not — I mean, I sent the email the morning of my arrest, I believe. And this was not the first email that we sent to Columbia and no answer.

Unfortunately, Columbia did not and does not, until now, treat all students as equal. What they care about is basically money and protecting their brand, rather than going and listening to their students, protecting their students with their legitimate concerns, not to have any special treatment for the Palestinian or the students supporting Palestine on campus.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering if Columbia —

MAHMOUD KHALIL: But Columbia failed to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Did Columbia University support you in any way? I remember in the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, who is the Tufts Fulbright scholar and graduate student also abducted by federal agents, Tufts wrote a statement of support. And then Suri Khan, the Dr. Suri Khan at Georgetown, Georgetown also spoke out. What about Columbia University on your behalf?

MAHMOUD KHALIL: Columbia did not offer any sort of support when it comes to the legal case. And this is shameful on a university that claims to support international students and to support the right of freedom of speech. But this was not surprising. Columbia has capitulated to the Trump administration, but before then, they capitulated to the Zionist donors and politicians in this country. So, to see them not offer this kind of support absolutely was not surprising, unfortunately.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about your time in the Jena ICE jail? You were held for over a hundred days there. Can you talk about the other prisoners, the conditions under which you were held? And then I want to get to the day your baby, your baby Deen, was born without you there. But talk about the jail until that point.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: So, in jail, you spend 24/7 with the same people. So, one of the things that we do is to just share stories from people from around the ward. And every day it’s just a more heartbreaking story than another, with people being snatched off the street or during their court hearings or ICE check-ins, where these people, like, they were trying to fix their documentation. They committed no crimes whatsoever. So, you have this shock with everyone who’s coming in around why they are there. I shared a dorm with over 70 men, and the stories are really heartbreaking, Amy, with people leaving their family outside without any kind of support, people who don’t have their rights — don’t know their rights, don’t know if they have any rights, in fact. And with ICE, who basically don’t tell anyone what their rights are and just deport people, I’ve seen people who unknowingly sign their deportation documents because ICE agents tricked them into doing so, which is a blatant violation of any rule of law or due process.

And just, like, to say that, like, the conditions inside were horrible. The food was horrible, the sleep quality equally bad, and just the atmosphere, where you are inside, you don’t know what’s happening, and you’re just expecting to follow orders and wait for an ICE officer to come and update you on your case. Unfortunately, a lot of these detainees don’t have legal representation. And I was very privileged to have an amazing legal team fighting on my behalf. And that took us three months for me to be released, despite me being a legal resident in the United States. So, imagine for a lot of these individuals who don’t have this kind of representation and who have, like, more complications in their documentation.

AMY GOODMAN: Mahmoud, can you talk about the day of Deen’s birth, your firstborn son? How did you learn that Noor had given birth?

MAHMOUD KHALIL: That days was absolutely one of the most difficult days that I had to endure in my life, being away from my wife and not having the opportunity to support her during this moment. And I was over the phone, so I would call every hour just to see, like, if Noor is in labor, yeah or no. And the moment of the delivery, I spent like over three hours over the phone, from 1:00 — I think 1:30 in the morning until 4:00 or 4:30, just, like, trying to support Noor as much as I could, because I did not want to miss that moment at all.

And what made it very difficult is because, like, this could have been easily avoided, were the Trump administration to follow the law, or at least, like, to offer me furlough, like, to go and be with my family for a few hours. But they refused that, because this administration thrives on cruelty and thrives on separation and family separation. So that was not surprising.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the moment when you met Deen for the first time? I mean, as you describe it now, you really were with Noor then. Of course, you were separate, but you were there. Over the phone, you heard his first cries. But talk about holding him for the first time. I remember — I mean, it was just weeks ago. Why it was that your lawyers had to fight, a battery of lawyers, for so many hours for Noor and Deen, for you to be able to have a contact visit? I mean, you have not been charged with a crime. But in the jail — is that right — where it was, in Jena, Louisiana?

MAHMOUD KHALIL: Yeah. As you said, I mean, it shouldn’t take an army of lawyers to get a one-hour contact visit to let me hold my son. The first time I saw my son was, in fact, through glass. So, he was literally in front of me, but separated by glass. I couldn’t hold him during the first time I saw him, which made me very, very angry about, like, a one-centimeter or one-inch glass separating me from holding my son.

And this is all by design, the cruelty of this administration, because their goal is to punish me as much as they could and in any way that they find, because what they want is they want to break me. They want to make an example out of me. So, the first time when we managed to get a court order, in fact — imagine getting a court order to force ICE to let me hold my son. And we had it for literally an hour, 7:00 in the morning. So, even when they agreed to do that — or, not agreed — even when they were forced to allow me to hold my son, they chose to make it at 7:00 in the morning in detention.

So, I mean, the feeling, I don’t think I can describe it. I was both very happy, but at the same time very angry and sad that it took us all this effort to have this one hour in detention. And basically, I was really anxious. I was just looking at the clock, when this hour would end. I just didn’t want this hour to end. And the hour was the fastest hour in my life, just like — you know, like, it went like this.

AMY GOODMAN: And so —

MAHMOUD KHALIL: Yeah, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: You were released less than two weeks ago, and now you are living at home with your wife and your infant son. Do you feel safe?

MAHMOUD KHALIL: I don’t fully feel safe, to be honest, Amy. We all know the rhetoric that’s currently going around in this country, the Islamophobia, the anti-Palestinian bigotry and racism, and this violence that was exported by Israel to this country. I’m being targeted by Israeli government-affiliated groups here in the U.S. who are very dangerous, who would do anything to silence Palestinians, because, for them, silencing is much more easier than dealing with the argument, because they have no argument about what they are doing in Palestine. And this is why they want to shut off the — shut down the conversation any way they can do, even if this would mean hurting or harming me and my family. And it’s a huge concern. But it’s a price that I need to accept for advocating for the rights of the Palestinian people, because, once again, this is all just a distraction from the genocide in Palestine. And these attempts to silence me are just one way for them to attack us and to cut — just not to let the public know about what Israel is doing and how the U.S. is complicit in this genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Mahmoud Khalil, you led a march from the steps of St. John the Divine up to Columbia University, wearing a Palestinian flag as a kind of cape, with a thousand supporters there, and you were one of the leaders of the encampment at Columbia that led to so many protests and encampments around the country on university campuses. Many of the protesters were Jewish. Many of the supporters for you who would march when you were detained were Jewish. I was wondering: What did that level of Jewish support mean to you here in the United States?

MAHMOUD KHALIL: First of all, just a correction: The student movement at Columbia doesn’t have leaders. I believe all the students equally contribute to the movement. And it’s being mobilized by a large number of students, hundreds of students at Columbia University.

But going back to your question, Amy, I mean, Jewish students are an integral part of the student movement, whether at Columbia or in the United States. And this is very, very important, because these Jewish students, they show the world that what Israel is doing is not in their name, is not in the name of Jewish safety, which is very important. And these, also, Jewish students are acting upon their values, of protecting the — protecting the weak or supporting justice. So, it’s really — to us, it’s very important. This shows that the Palestinian cause goes beyond Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims. It’s a universal cause for justice, for freedom and for human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Mahmoud, as you are free now here in New York, you still face deportation?

MAHMOUD KHALIL: I do. I mean, now I’m out on bail, which means that the court proceedings can continue while I am out. So, I’m still facing deportation. However, a judge, a federal judge, ruled that the Rubio determination on what Rubio did to me is likely unconstitutional, and that’s why he ordered my release on bail. So I’m confident that we will prevail in court, that this administration attempts to silence us wouldn’t succeed, and now that I will seek accountability. I will seek accountability from this administration, from the individuals and actors who contributed to my arrest, and now exploring these options with my lawyer, because in the first place, what I was protesting, I was protesting for accountability, to hold Columbia and the U.S. government accountable for their complicity in war crimes and genocide against the Palestinians. And I will continue to do so, because what happened to me shouldn’t have happened in the first place. I shouldn’t have been prosecuted simply for my freedom of speech, simply for speaking up for Palestinian rights. And those who have contributed to that in any way should be held accountable.

AMY GOODMAN: Mahmoud Khalil, thanks so much for joining us, Columbia University graduate, Palestinian student activist, detained by ICE March 8th and held for 104 days at the ICE jail in Jena, Louisiana. During that time, his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, gave birth to their first child, Deen. Mahmoud was released June 20th. You can see him coming to Newark Airport and the next day’s event in front of St. John the Divine with a thousand people greeting him at democracynow.org, as well as our interview with Mohsen Mahdawi, who also graduated from Columbia University after being jailed in Vermont for several weeks. You can go to democracynow.org.

When we come back, we’ll be joined by Congressmember Ro Khanna, as the House continues to debate President Trump’s budget bill. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Peaceable Kingdom” by Patti Smith, performing at Democracy Now!’s 20th anniversary. Next year, we celebrate our 30th.