Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate at the center of a high-profile deportation fight with the US government over his pro-Palestinian views, personally responded to the government’s claims that he’s a threat to foreign policy for the first time in a sworn legal declaration unsealed Thursday.

Why should protesting this Israel government’s indiscriminate killing of thousands of innocent Palestinians result in the erosion of my constitutional rights?”

Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student detained in March by immigration agents, responded for the first time to the charges against him and described the "irreparable harm" his arrest has had on him and his family.