Mahmoud Khalil memoir on 104-day ICE detention due in September
Mahmoud Khalil has turned 104 days in US immigration detention into a memoir.
No Land to Stand On recounts his detention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE The Guardian. It is due from Metropolitan Books, an imprint, meaning a named list within a larger publisher, of Henry Holt & Company in the United States in September Publishers Weekly. In the United Kingdom, it will appear as a 208-page hardback under the Picador imprint on 29 September 2026 Pan Macmillan.
Khalil was completing a master's degree at Columbia University in New York when plain-clothed officers from the Department of Homeland Security detained him at his home in March 2025. He was a green card holder, meaning a non-citizen with permanent US residency. After the arrest he was moved to an immigration detention facility in Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles away.
Court reporting after his release described him as a Columbia University graduate Reuters. The arrest was first reported as the ICE detention of a Palestinian activist Associated Press. A federal judge then blocked his removal from the US while the court weighed a petition challenging the arrest.
The action followed his advocacy for pro-Palestinian protesters in campus protests over Columbia University's links to Israel. The protesters called for the university to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions and companies profiting from Israel's onslaught on Gaza. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined that Khalil's continued presence would have adverse foreign policy consequences and sought his deportation under a McCarthy-era legal provision.
No criminal charges were brought against Khalil. There was no suggestion he had done anything unlawful. That legal position forms the core of the detention account.
Khalil was born to Palestinian parents in a refugee camp in Syria. He spent 104 days in detention and missed the birth of his son. He was released on bail in June after a federal judge ruled his detention unconstitutional, but the administration is still seeking his removal.
A US listing gives a book tour from 24 September 2026 to 4 October 2026 Macmillan. The UK edition carries ISBN 9781037410666.
For readers picking up the book, this means a first-person record that moves from campus protest to arrest, transfer, court hearings and release. It leaves the legal case open. The next steps belong to the courts.
