Today is Father’s Day. Mahmoud Khalil should be with his newborn son.
Instead, thanks to an administration that would rather hold students captive than respect our First Amendment right to free speech, Mahmoud is still in ICE detention, over a thousand miles away from his family, spending Father’s Day alone.
Over 150,000 ACLU supporters like you have joined us to demand Mahmoud’s freedom. Cases just like Mahmoud’s across the country have resulted in students and scholars being freed – clearly reaffirming everyone’s right to political speech. Yet the government is hellbent on delaying justice and keeping Mahmoud Khalil from his wife and newborn son on Father’s Day.
Even after a judge ruled Mahmoud’s detention on foreign policy grounds unconstitutional, the administration is continuing to hold him on a baseless second charge – one for which they’ve consistently failed to provide evidence and which the government practically never holds people in detention for.
The cruelty is the point: The government is using any excuse – no matter how flimsy – to punish Mahmoud for his speech.
This fight isn’t over.
– The ACLU Team
ACLU of Washington
P.O. Box 2728
Seattle, WA 98111-2728