Palestine United States

No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention

Name: No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention
ISBN: 9781250462008

by Mahmoud Khalil

Freedom & Resistance Non-Fiction Memoir Political Writing Biography 2026

Summary

In this powerful memoir, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil recounts his detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March 2025 and the fight against his threatened deportation. A Columbia University graduate student and legal permanent resident, Khalil became a prominent voice in student protests against the war in Gaza. His arrest separated him from his pregnant wife and home in New York, transporting him to a detention facility in Louisiana, where he faced uncertainty about his future and the possibility of being forcibly removed from the country.

Drawing on the diary he kept during his imprisonment, Khalil describes the psychological toll of detention, the precarious lives of fellow detainees, and the unexpected solidarity that develops among people deprived of their freedom. He also traces his family’s history of displacement—from Palestine to a refugee camp in Syria—and his own journey through Lebanon to the United States. Combining personal testimony with political reflection, this memoir examines exile, belonging, and the consequences of speaking out against injustice. It asks what freedom and security truly mean when a person’s right to remain at home can be challenged for exercising their right to protest.

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About the author

Mahmoud Khalil

Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian writer and activist born in a refugee camp in Syria to a family displaced from Palestine. At eighteen, he left Syria and moved to Lebanon, where he studied computer science at the Lebanese American University while working with Syrian refugees. He later served as a programme manager at the British Embassy in Beirut. In 2022, Khalil moved to the United States to study at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He became widely known as a negotiator and spokesperson during the student protests against the war in Gaza. In March 2025, he was detained by U.S. immigration authorities and held for more than three months while facing deportation proceedings, an experience that brought international attention to questions of free speech, immigration, and political dissent. No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention (2026) is his first book. Drawing on his experiences in detention and his family’s history of displacement, Khalil writes about the human consequences of political repression and the struggle for dignity, freedom, and the right to belong.

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Details

Published: 2026
Author: Mahmoud Khalil

No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention

Summary

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