Jena, Louisiana - This Mother's Day, Palestinian Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil penned a letter to his newborn son as he continues to fight his ongoing ICE detention in Louisiana.

"Yaba Deen, it has been two weeks since you were born, and these are my first words to you," Khalil wrote in the letter three weeks after the birth of his son, Deen.

"In the early hours of 21 April, I waited on the other end of a phone as your mother labored to bring you into this world. I listened to her pained breaths and tried to speak comforting words into her ear over the crackling line."

Khalil said he had to keep his voice low at the time, as he was in a room at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center with dozens of other men trying to sleep.

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A US green card holder, Khalil was arrested by plainclothes federal officers – without a warrant – on March 8 at his New York City apartment building. His wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, was eight months pregnant with their first child at the time of his abduction.

The recent Columbia University graduate student had been a prominent member of the Palestine liberation movement on campus. The Trump administration claimed Khalil poses a threat to US foreign policy interests, while supporters have denounced his detention as an outrageous attack on free speech rights, especially when it comes to Palestinian human rights.

"I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience," Khalil wrote in his latest missive. "Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?"

Khalil in his letter opened up on how painful it has been to miss out on key moments in his firstborn child's early life.

"Deen, my heart aches that I could not hold you in my arms and hear your first cry, that I could not unfurl your clenched fists or change your first diaper. I am sorry that I was not there to hold your mother’s hand or to recite the adhan, or call to prayer, in your ear," he wrote.

"But my absence is not unique. Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons."

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Khalil, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp, noted that forced family separations are all too common under Israeli occupation and assault.

Considering the horrors Palestinians have endured for decades, the human rights activist told his son: "The struggle for Palestinian liberation is not a burden; it is a duty and an honor we carry with pride. So at every turning point in my life, you will find me choosing Palestine. Palestine over ease. Palestine over comfort. Palestine over self. This struggle is sweeter than a life without dignity. The tyrants want us to submit, to obey, to be perfect victims. But we are free, and we will remain free. I hope you feel this as deeply as I do."

Khalil continued to reaffirm his commitment to the fight for justice for the Palestinian people.

"Deen, my love for you is deeper than anything I have ever known. Loving you is not separate from the struggle for liberation. It is liberation itself. I fight for you, and for every Palestinian child whose life deserves safety, tenderness and freedom," the new father wrote as his letter drew to a close.

"I hope one day you will stand tall knowing your father was not absent out of apathy, but out of conviction. And I will spend my life making up for the moments we lost – starting with this one, writing to you with all the love in my heart."