On a Mission: Mahmoud Khalil Visits Capitol Hill
Today, I walked through the corridors of power with the Palestinian student protest leader.
“I just saw you on TV…wait you’re–”
The words drifted from a young, lanyard-clad person inside a muggy elevator in the depths of the US Senate building.
Another rider, gesturing towards the target of the young person’s intrigue, chimed in jokingly, “Jim.”
Some 137 days after he was abducted by the Trump administration for his anti-war protest activity at Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil was inside the complex teeming with some of the same politicians and interests that support his deportation.
Every step he took was purposeful. He was meeting with well over a dozen members of Congress, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey and Reps. Ilhan Omar and Jim McGovern. Some had been at the forefront of advocating for his release and that of other students detained for their anti-war protest. Some were less so, but at least sympathetic.
He had split the meetings between two jam-packed days on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday alone, Khalil netted over 20,000 steps back and forth around the Capitol, he said.
Khalil’s visit comes as the Trump administration continues to pursue his deportation, and after an ongoing federal trial revealed that the administration drew upon names from the doxxing website Canary Mission to target students like him. The green card holder has separately sued the administration for $20 million or an apology and a change in policy.
But Trump’s effort to deport pro-Palestinian international students like him was not the sole reason for his visit.
Khalil said that his focus was much wider.
“The center of it is to stop the war,” Khalil said. “What happened to me [is] still like a distraction. They want it to be a distraction from what's happening,” he explained, saying that his main message was to push members of Congress to speak out against Israel’s war on Gaza, to rightly call it a genocide.
He also sought to get members to support students and call out schools like Columbia University for their “cowardness, for their complicity in targeting the student movement,” noting how Columbia just issued mass suspensions and expulsions to over 70 students on Tuesday over their protest activity (just after Khalil’s visit, Columbia announced it had reached a deal with Trump that will involve a $200 million settlement, as well as an overhaul of various university policies).
In between bites of potato chips and sips of water, some of the first sustenance he had had all day as he scrambled around DC’s swamp-like climate, Khalil said he received a warm reception. Members were receptive, even those who were concerned about what it could mean for them politically.
But in some conversations, he described, members said the climate around the issue of Israel and Palestine was shifting. That, perhaps, gone were the days that being pro-Palestine was a liability, and in fact, supporting Israel unconditionally may be the liability, or that supporting Palestine could even be a plus.
‘You Tried to Disappear Me’
This was exhibited no less by how difficult it was to maintain a conversation with Khalil for more than a few minutes. Person after person – congressional staffers, those from nonprofits and lobbying organizations, and others – would approach Khalil to say “hello,” or “thank you,” or “thank goodness you’re free.”
And if they weren’t saying hello, their eyes followed. Heads turned. “Is that…?”
At one point, as we walked in the halls, one woman’s eyes widened and she turned to a colleague walking with her.
Minutes later, the woman, who works in an international non-profit, reappeared, expressing gratitude for Khalil and for his freedom. She shared a photo of her son, who was holding a sign that said “Free Mahmoud.”
Earlier, one of Khalil’s guides mentioned that a congressional staffer had walked up to Khalil, saying they were Jewish and were frustrated by how their identity was being weaponized to target students like Khalil.
The revolving expressions of support were striking not only for their genuineness, but also their setting: here, in Washington, DC, the US Capitol, where politicians have expressed anything but grace for Khalil.
What does it mean for a pariah to walk amongst his vilifiers?
During his trek around the institutions that condemn him, Khalil caught a glimpse of some of the vilifiers themselves. The same officials who painted a scarlet target on his back. The same who sought to make the name “Mahmoud Khalil” poison.
It’s a mix of feelings for Khalil. But it felt good to be there, in their face, “to call their bluff and bullshit.”
“You tried to disappear me, but I'm here in the halls, advocating for myself and actually speaking about myself,” Khalil said, noting the absence of Palestinian voices within a place so determined to dictate Palestinian fates. “So I'm here to actually defend myself and to advocate for my people, for the Palestinians.”
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Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct McGovern’s first name.
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I would like to LIKE this article 9,000 times. This was written so well, I could picture everything so well in my mind, I felt like I had just seen video footage of Khalil during his day. Khalil is laying down the template for how to rise above and keep demanding a just and peaceful world in the middle of extraordinary cruelty and chaos.
It’s been a day of shedding tears for me. After the tenth picture of a bloodied, dazed and starving baby, the cruel work of Israel and the US, I had resorted to tears and despair. Mahmoud Khalil walking the halls of congress gives me hope. May the forced starvation of Palestinians end soon, may there be a permanent ceasefire soon, may Palestine be free soon. No one is free until Palestine is free.