In March, the Trump administration illegally arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University and an advocate for Palestinian human rights. Khalil, a U.S. green card holder, was detained in New York while returning from an iftar dinner with his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, who is currently nine months pregnant. He was later put on a plane and sent to a detention facility in Louisiana without notice to his attorney or family.

Since Khalil's arrest, the administration has doubled down on its unlawful policy of revoking people's green cards and visas based on their political beliefs and advocacy. To be clear: The First Amendment does not allow the government to retaliate against anyone for their speech. Ripping someone from their home, stripping them of their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint is an unconstitutional attempt by President Donald Trump to silence dissent. Political speech – however controversial some may find it – may never be the basis for punishment, including deportation.

Below, read Dr. Abdalla’s letter to her husband one month into his detention.

Letter to My Husband Mahmoud Khalil

Dr. Noor Abdalla

April 8, 2025

Exactly a month ago, you were taken from me. This is the longest we have been apart since we got married. I miss you more and more everyday and as the days draw us closer to the arrival of our child, I am haunted by the uncertainty that looms over me—the possibility that you might not be there for this monumental moment. Every kick, every cramp, every small flutter I feel inside me serves as an inescapable reminder of the family we’ve dreamed of building together. Yet, I am left to navigate this profound journey alone, while you endure the cruel and unjust confines of a detention center.

I could not be more proud of you, Mahmoud. You embody everything I ever hoped for in a partner and the father of my children. What more could I ask for as a role model for our children than a man who, with unwavering conviction, stands up for the liberation of his people, fully cognizant of the consequences of speaking truth to power? Your courage is boundless, and now more than ever, I am in awe of your strength and determination. Your voice, your belief in justice, and your refusal to be silenced are the very qualities that make you the man I love and admire.

We will not forget those who have orchestrated this injustice, the government officials and university administrators who have targeted you without cause, without any shred of evidence to justify their actions. They sit in their ivory towers, scrambling to fabricate lies and distort the truth, throwing accusations like stones in the hope that something will stick. What they fail to realize is that their efforts are futile. Their wrongful detention of you is a testament to the fact that you have struck a nerve. You’ve disrupted the false narratives they’ve worked so hard to maintain, and spoken a truth that they are too terrified to acknowledge. What more do we have than our fundamental right to free speech, when they constantly attempt to strip us of our dignity, telling us we are unworthy of life, of respect, of voice? Now, they seek to punish that very speech, to silence the words that challenge their corrupt and oppressive systems.

They are trying to silence you. They are trying to silence anyone who dares to speak out against the atrocities happening in Palestine. But they will fail. We will not be silenced. We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children—until Palestine is free. I eagerly await the day when I can tell our son the stories of his father’s bravery, of the courage that courses through his veins, and of the pride he should feel to carry Palestinian blood… your blood. And, more than anything, I pray that he will not have to grow up fighting the same fight for our basic freedoms.

We will be reunited soon. Until then, I will continue to fight for you, for us and for our family. Your resilience and your courage will guide us through the storm. You are my best friend, my comrade, the very air that sustains me when it feels as though there is none left. I know your spirit is unwavering, that they cannot break you, and that you will emerge from this stronger than ever. I have no doubt that, when you are finally released, you will raise your hands in the air, chanting “Free Palestine.”

Mikal Mahdi committed two tragic murders in 2004 when he was only 21. This Friday, more than two decades later, South Carolina plans to execute him for his crimes, despite serious constitutional and moral questions that call for the Supreme Court to stay his execution. If carried out, Mikal’s execution will be the third in South Carolina this year, and the 12th execution nationwide.

Without a doubt, Mikal’s crimes caused irreparable harm, but justice requires a fair trial and sentencing.

Mikal’s story is a tragic one of a child failed by everyone at every turn. As a toddler, Mikal witnessed his father routinely and viciously beat his mother. At age four, his mother fled, leaving Mikal and his brother to become the target of his father’s abuse. By age eight, Mikal was suicidal. At age 14, he was sent to juvenile detention for property crimes. After serving his time, however, his father failed to take him to required court and other program meetings. He was incarcerated again and thrown into solitary confinement—a practice now largely understood as a form of torture, particularly for children. At trial, his attorneys declined to present key details about his life to the court, including his long history of childhood abuse, neglect and abandonment.

Credit: Office of Federal Public Defenders

Today, at 42, Mikal is remorseful and accepts responsibility for crimes he committed when he was 21. He has been denied life without parole, and the state intends to execute him Friday, April 11th. His traumatic childhood, at home and in custody, shaped his life and actions and should have been a key factor in the state’s decision, yet his trauma was not considered. It is a profound injustice that, today, the system that has consistently failed Mikal at every turn now ignores those failures when determining whether he should live or die.

Mikal grew up in an abusive home where violence was commonplace. One of Mikal’s earliest memories is of his father slamming his mother through a glass table. After his mother fled this abuse, Mikal’s father told him she was dead. Left in his violent and mentally ill father’s care, Mikal suffered years of physical and emotional abuse at home. At age eight, Mikal showed signs of severe depression and suicidal ideation. At age nine, Mikal watched his father kidnap and assault his mother at gunpoint. At age 11, his father unenrolled him from school, and kept him at home for daily survivalist training in the rural woods where they lived.

As a teen, Mikal’s mental health continued to decline. He was diagnosed with depression. He expressed suicidal ideation repeatedly and was placed on suicide watch multiple times. Instead of receiving the mental health care he needed, Mikal was thrust into the prison system at 14. He spent the rest of his childhood and young adulthood in custody, alone. From 14 to 21—key years for brain development—he spent a collective 8,000 hours in solitary confinement, including one stretch of 1,700 consecutive hours (more than two months), and another stretch of 500 hours (three weeks).

While incarcerated, Mikal was put into isolation for typical adolescent behavior, like untucking his shirt, swearing, refusing haircuts, and ripping out book pages. He was tased, shot with rubber bullets, and subjected to racial slurs. He was denied educational, rehabilitative, and therapeutic programs. By the time Mikal was released, he left with worsening mental illness, deep trauma, and no support system. Two months later, he committed the crimes for which he now faces execution.

For many years now, the Supreme Court has recognized that the criminal legal system should treat children differently than adults. Because kids are still developing physically, psychologically, and neurologically, the legal system sees them as having less culpability for their actions and a greater capacity for reform. For those reasons, juvenile detention is supposed to be rehabilitative. Developmental psychology and neuroscience further support the need for rehabilitation, recognizing that our brains continue to develop into our mid-twenties. However, as a child, Mikal’s time in custody was far from rehabilitative. We now know that placing kids in solitary confinement for even a few days can lead to permanent cognitive and behavioral impairment. Isolation can irreversibly change neural pathways and neurochemistry, altering areas of the brain responsible for regulating emotions and memory.

No court has ever considered Mikal’s full story, even though the law requires that all relevant mitigating evidence be presented to ensure a fair and just sentencing process. Because the death penalty is final and irreversible, capital trials demand the highest level of diligence, insisting on an unflinching look into the person’s life history and circumstances before a sentence can be imposed. But Mikal received a death sentence from a judge who heard less than 30 minutes of testimony about his upbringing. His lawyers did not call a single witness who could testify firsthand to the potential he showed as a young child, and they presented only 15 transcript pages of mitigating evidence at trial—a shockingly brief presentation for a life-or-death decision. Thus, the court was not only deprived of the many facts detailing the trauma of Mikal’s youth, but also the scientific evidence that would have shown the impact it had on a young, developing brain. The court had no window into how those years of abuse, isolation, and systemic violence shaped Mikal’s path.

Allowing Mikal’s execution to proceed is beyond a failure of justice. It is a statement that we’re willing to abandon children, deny them care, and then punish them when they break under the weight of that neglect. We can and must do better. The Supreme Court has the opportunity now to stop the cycle of neglect and abandonment that has defined Mikal’s life and experience with the legal system. It should choose to recognize the humanity of the child that the system failed to protect.

Learn more about how to support Mikal's clemency effort here.

As a Pawnee woman who is Deaf, I’ve long faced barriers to being evaluated fairly, not because I lack experience or qualifications, but because of systemic bias and technology that wasn’t built with people like me in mind.

So when I was offered a job at Intuit, a financial software company, in late 2019 as a tax associate, I was thrilled. In this role, I helped customers with their tax questions and consistently received high ratings for my service. I took pride in being able to resolve customer concerns quickly and with empathy.

But, during my first year, I was shocked to learn that one of my key performance indicator scores was unusually low. After meeting with my manager, I learned that Intuit’s artificial intelligence (AI) software—used to measure how closely employees followed call scripts—wasn’t accurately recognizing my speech because of my Deaf accent. Instead of correcting the problem, I was reassigned to a role that no longer involved answering customer calls. Even after that setback, I stayed committed to my work. In 2021, I was promoted to Tax Expert Lead. Over the next three tax seasons, I consistently hit high performance metrics and received positive feedback.

In 2023, I joined Intuit’s Accessibility Team to help identify and address barriers that people with disabilities face across the company’s services. During that time, I raised concerns about Intuit’s use of HireVue—a vendor that provides AI-based video interviewing software—as part of the company’s hiring process. I specifically noted that the platform posed challenges for deaf and hard-of-hearing applicants. The Accessibility Team chair said they would look into it, but I never heard about any follow-up or action taken.

After the 2023 tax season, my manager—who was also part of the hiring committee—encouraged me to apply for a seasonal manager position. It was the next logical step in my career, and I knew I was qualified. I applied in spring 2024.Soon after, I received an invitation to complete a video interview using the HireVue platform. I immediately knew this would be a problem because the platform didn’t provide consistent subtitles for all audio content. In fact, studies show that the technology underlying HireVue performs worse for non-white speakers and even worse for speakers with a deaf accent.

I requested an accommodation: human-generated captioning for the interview. Unfortunately, Intuit did not provide me with this requested accommodation, instead saying that HireVue had built-in subtitles. But, when I began the interview, those subtitles weren’t there for all the content. I had to rely on Google Chrome’s auto-captions, which were full of errors and made it hard to fully understand the questions. Still, I pushed forward. I did my best, confident in my qualifications and experience.

Weeks later, I got an email letting me know Intuit had moved on with other candidates. The feedback I received was devastating: I was told to improve my communication by being more concise, adapting my style to different audiences, and projecting more confidence. What hurt the most was the suggestion that I “practice active listening. ”As a Deaf woman, that comment was not only ignorant—it was deeply offensive. It made me feel like the HireVue system had completely failed to assess me fairly. Worse, it made clear that the people interpreting the HireVue results didn’t understand the realities of Deaf communication.

My experience reflects a bigger problem: the systemic discrimination embedded in AI-powered hiring tools. These systems were not built for people like me. Native professionals, deaf individuals, and countless others are being unfairly screened out by biased technology that prioritizes data over human understanding.

That’s why the ACLU, the ACLU of Colorado, Public Justice, and Eisenberg & Baum, LLP have filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The complaint charges Intuit and HireVue with violating the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Real change is needed. Companies must stop using hiring technologies that discriminate against disabled and non-white applicants. They must implement accessible, equitable hiring practices that evaluate people based on their skills, experience, and potential—not on biased algorithms.

AI should never be used as a barrier. It’s time for action, accountability, and justice.