Khalil is being held at an ICE detention center in Jena, Louisiana. His lawyers asked if he could hold his baby, who is now about a month old, when his wife visited him. The request was denied. Khalil's attorneys submitted a court filing with email correspondence that appeared to support their claim. "I am writing again to ask you both...for an exception to [the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center's] standing no-contact social visitation policy," one of Khalil's lawyers said in a May 20 email to a facility administrator and two others whose email addresses were redacted. "We come to you requesting your assistance in uniting a new father with his less than one-month old first-born child, who, as you know, was born while his father was detained." The facility administrator replied on Wednesday morning: "The visit will remain as non-contact as previously arranged. Thank you." The denial capped days of back-and-forth between the GEO Group facility administrator and Khalil's attorneys. His lawyers repeatedly asked officials to permit a "contact visit" between Khalil, his wife and his newborn son. The facility administrator said that only "non-contact" visitation was approved.

Detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was allowed to hold his one-month-old son for the first time Thursday after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration's efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a plexiglass barrier. The visit came ahead of a scheduled immigration hearing for Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been detained in a Louisiana jail since March 8.

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