Mahmoud Khalil, the detained Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, has said in a new court filing that the “most immediate and visceral harms” he has experienced during his nearly three-month detention have been missing the birth of his son and being separated from his wife.
“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,” Khalil said. “I listened to her pain, trying to comfort her while 70 other men slept around me. When I heard my son’s first cries, I buried my face in my arms so no one would see me weep.
“To not be able to see them, hold them, speak with them freely, enjoy everything I imagined our first days as a family would be like, is devastating,” he wrote about the birth in late April.
The 
