‘It Felt Like Kidnapping,’ Khalil Says in First Interview Since Release

Mahmoud Khalil sat in a Manhattan apartment dotted with posters and signs calling for his freedom and described the moment 105 days before when plainclothes immigration agents had handcuffed him in the building lobby.

“All the ‘Know Your Rights’ information and fliers I read and familiarized myself with were useless,” Mr. Khalil said. “There are no rights in such situations.”

“It felt like kidnapping,” he said.

Mr. Khalil, a 30-year-old Columbia University graduate and permanent resident, was the first student protester targeted and detained by the Trump administration. On Friday, after having spent more than three months in detention in Jena, La., he was released on bail.

He traveled most of the night to return to New York City, and on Saturday evening turned off a television newscast on America’s attack on Iran to speak publicly for the first time about his arrest, his detention and his plans now that he is free.

He said that if President Trump’s goal had been to suppress pro-Palestinian speech, the president had “absolutely failed.”

When he was in prison, he had received hundreds of letters from people whose interest in the Palestinian movement had been catalyzed by his case, he said.