by Mahmoud Khalil
Metropolitan Books
9/29/2026, paperback
SKU: 9781250462008
A revelatory and powerful testament of protest, courage, and imprisonment in America's deportation regime
"Are you Mahmoud Khalil?" The question marked the start of a politically charged odyssey that took the Palestinian graduate student and legal resident from his pregnant wife and home in New York City, transported him across the country, and locked him up in a Louisiana detention camp under threat of deportation. His "crime" exercising his right to free speech at Columbia University, where he emerged as a leading voice against the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. No Land to Stand On is his indelible account, the story of a man confronting the reality that he had become target number one for a lawless regime shredding basic rights.
Drawing on his prison diary and writing in vivid, page-turning detail, Mahmoud Khalil conjures the despair and cruelty of ICE detention, where prisoners can vanish overnight and visiting families risk their own deportation. There is humanity, too, in the men's acts of care--their mutual help with documents, the prison cake they make after Mahmoud can only follow the birth of his son on the public payphone. In tandem, he tells the multi-generational story of a family expelled from Palestine to a Syrian refugee camp, of flight from Assad's regime to Lebanon, of arrival in an America that promised permanence and protection, and of the enduring struggle for Palestine.
A work of courage and resistance, No Land to Stand On is a call to integrity, to staying true to one's life's mission, and to defending the inalienable right to safety, freedom, and a land to stand on.
Reviews:
"In his plainspoken memoir, No Land to Stand On , Khalil seeks to reestablish sovereignty over his own life story. . . . This is not a story of stoic heroism but of constant estimation (and sometimes underestimation) of risk and the decision to accept it as the price of doing the right thing in a world of despots and cowards. It's marked by fear, second-guessing, and frustration, all with no guarantee that things will actually get better. Khalil does not want to be shot at, or sought by the secret police, or detained in some for-profit gulag. He wants to live a normal life in his home with his wife and son, something that the world around him has decided is impossible, and so he struggles on." --The New Republic
"A quietly shattering memoir . . . The prose in this prison memoir is matter-of-fact and unadorned, noticeably free of self-pity. Especially striking is Khalil's account of being caged in a camp apparently designed to get people to give up hope. . . . A frightening, important book."--The New York Times
"Khalil navigates the fragile balance between hope and despair while affirming his innocence and unwavering commitment to fight for justice . . . There will be many more stories to be written by ICE victims; Khalil sets the gold standard with grace and humility."--Booklist, Starred Review
"A target of the Trump administration offers a memoir that is part prison narrative, part humanizing reclamation, part advocate's roar. . . . The author watches his notoriety build and comes to understand President Trump's personal investment in his case: ". . . I was an experiment, I realized. The government was testing what it could get away with. . . . If they succeeded with me, a permanent resident with no criminal history, imagine what they could do to others." A searing, uncompromising account of the deep, personal impacts of an unjust system." --Kirkus
About the Author:
Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Syria. He fled Assad's Syria at the age of 18 and holds Algerian citizenship. He studied computer science at the Lebanese American University while working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, then served as programs manager at the British Embassy in Beirut. He moved to the United States in 2022 to attend Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where he became a prominent figure during the student protests against the war on Gaza. Mahmoud lives in New York, where he continues to fight against the threat of deportation. No Land to Stand On is his first book.