Still held in a Louisiana detention center for the crime of denouncing the slaughter and starvation of Gazan children, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil told a judge Thursday his deportation would likely mean death for him and his family. His testimony came hours after Khalil finally got to hold his one-month-old son Deen for the first time - in a surreal victory, without plexiglass - after a legal battle against "the calculated cruelty" of a malignant regime that had argued a father-son meeting would be "unsafe."

An Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent born in a refugee camp in Syria, Khalil became a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and earned his master's degree in international studies at Columbia last year before becoming the first Gaza protester arrested under a promised crackdown. Abducted in March by ICE and charged under an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, he was alleged by Marco Rubio to pose "adverse foreign policy consequences" despite virtually no evidence and no charge of a crime. One of the few protesters still in detention - several others were released as their cases play out - he missed the April birth of his first child - request denied - and his graduation this week while his case winds its way through immigration and federal courts.

Kahlil's attorneys have persistently argued their client is the target of "egregious government misconduct," from his arrest without a warrant by masked, unnamed ICE agents who falsely claimed he was "a flight risk" to ongoing efforts by regime lawyers to slow down his habeas corpus case against deportation before an independent federal judge while fast-tracking court proceedings before government-beholden immigration judges to remove him. The entire so-called case against him, argues one of his lawyers, is simply "an unsuccessful attempt to silence people who speak up in defense of Palestinian human rights,” part of the vast and illegal overreach of a regime that's "presented no evidence in support of its baseless rhetoric.”

At Thursday's hearing, Judge Jamee Comans denied a motion by his attorneys to end deportation proceedings and sought to determined if he's entitled to relief from that threat, possibly through asylum. Testifying for two hours, Khalil described his early life, journey to Columbia and campus activism as a prominent pro-Palestinian voice at last year's protests. "I spent a good part of my life fleeing from harm and advocating for the marginalized," he said. "That is what I was protesting, that is what I will continue to protest. This is what everyone should protest.” He also said "having been falsely labelled a terrorist or Hamas supporter (has) put a target on my back wherever I go." His deportation, he fears, would lead to kidnapping, assassination, torture or targeting of his family.

His attorneys agreed Khalil's "life is at stake" if he was deported to "incredibly volatile" Syria or Algeria, where "Israel has a well-known history of assassinating pro-Palestinian intellectuals." They called experts on the Middle East and North Africa to verify the risks he'd face due to his visibility and false charges against him; they also had Columbia faculty and students, some Jewish, attest to Khalil's character as "an upstanding, principled and well-respected member of our community," "a diplomat in every sense," "a peacekeeper." Finally, they offered new video evidence contradicting claims Khalil was a "flight risk"; at his arrest, he made no attempt to flee or repel the thugs confronting him. Comans didn't issue a ruling but gave lawyers until June 2 to submit closing arguments.

Attending the hearing were Khalil's wife Dr. Noor Abdalla, a dentist and U.S. citizen, and Deen; both traveled nearly 1,500 miles so Deen could meet his........

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