New York (Quds News Network)- A group of celebrity fathers has called for the release of Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who remains in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention on what would have been his first Father's Day. In a video, released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the celebrity dads – actors Mark Ruffalo, Mahershala Ali, Dallas Goldtooth, Arian Moayed, Mo Amer and Alex Winter; comic and television host W Kamau Bell; and the musician Tom Morello – read excerpts from Khalil’s letter directly to a camera to his newborn son. Khalil penned the letter, first reported in May, as a direct address to his son, Deen, who was born in April while ICE continued to hold Khalil in prison in Louisiana. The video ends with a message from the ACLU that “all fathers deserve to be with their children on Father’s Day”, as well as a link to an ACLU petition to free Khalil. Khalil, a former graduate student at Columbia University who helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at the school, was arrested by plainclothes immigration officials on 8 March, while walking home from dinner in New York City with his wife, Noor Abdalla. A green card holder with a student visa, Khalil has never been charged with a crime. The Trump administration seeks to deport him, claiming his beliefs constitute a threat to national security. Since March, he has been held in a Louisiana detention center 1,500 miles away from his family and the site of his arrest. The video begins with Khalil’s voice, speaking to his son over the phone from the detention center: “Yaba Deen, these are my first words to you,” he says over a clip of Deen in yellow pajamas. The eight fathers then recite Khalil’s words, explaining how, as he wrote, “I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction. “How is it that the same politicians who preach ‘family values’ are the ones tearing families apart?” says Ali. “Loving you is not separate from the struggle for liberation,” says an emotional Amer, a Palestinian American comedian, in Khalil’s words. “It is liberation itself. I fight for you, and for every Palestinian child whose life deserves safety, tenderness and freedom.” “I am a Palestinian refugee, came to America, became a citizen in 2009, and in 2023 I had a son,” Amer said in a statement explaining his participation. “Mahmoud’s letter is like a dagger to the heart, and that’s why I’m doing this.” Added Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure star Winter: “I’m recording this as a father and a great believer in due process and the rule of law.” “I am a father and that’s why I’m making this video,” said Moayed. “I can’t imagine being taken away from my child for speaking up for labor rights. I can’t imagine being taken away from my child for speaking up for Iranian rights. I can’t imagine being taken away from my child for speaking up for veterans’ rights. All of which I have done in the past. And now I’m saying the same thing.” “No human being deserves to be taken away from their child because of what they believe in,” he added. “That’s not what this country is made for.” Khalil’s arrest, the first in a wave of detentions of pro-Palestinian activists in the US, ignited nationwide outcry in March. In April, an immigration judge ruled that the Trump administration could deport him for his beliefs, siding with an administration memo that Khalil’s “current or expected beliefs, statements or associations” were counter to US foreign policy interests. On Wednesday, Judge Michael E Farbiarz ruled the Trump administration could no longer detain Khalil on that basis. The federal judge in New Jersey said efforts to deport him based on those grounds were likely unconstitutional. Farbiarz had given the US government until Friday morning to appeal against the order, which the Trump administration did not do. Khalil’s lawyers then argued he must be released immediately, but the government said it would keep him detained in a remote detention facility in Louisiana. The administration argued it was authorized to continue detaining him based on alternative grounds – its allegations that he lied on his green-card application. On Friday, Farbiarz said Khalil’s lawyers had failed to present enough evidence that detention based on the green-card claims was unlawful, suggesting attorneys for the 30-year-old activist could seek bail from a Louisiana immigration judge. “Mahmoud Khalil was detained in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian rights,” Amy Greer, one of his attorneys, said in a statement on Friday evening. “The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father’s Day as a family. Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in [immigration] detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians. It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”