Filmmakers behind Palestine protest documentary release interview with Mahmoud Khalil

Activist threatened with deportation from US talks about his upbringing in a refugee camp and how his grandparents fled Israeli aggression in Tiberius

A clip of detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil from a documentary called The Encampments has been shared by its production company, Watermelon films.

The short video shows Khalil, who has been threatened with deportation from the US since his arrest, discussing his upbringing and family history in Palestine.

“I was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus in Syria,” says Khalil. He then discusses his grandparents and how they fled Tiberias before the start of the Nakba.

“In April 1948, a month before the Nakba, the Zionist militias – they burnt one of their villages. When they heard the news about that, they had to leave immediately.”

Khalil then speaks about how his grandparents fled to a refugee camp, during which his grandmother became pregnant with Khalil's father. “When they arrived in the refugee camp, they thought it's just a matter of days until they would go back,” Khalil says. “They did not want to be killed because they heard about the horror stories across Tiberias.”

The Encampments is a documentary directed by Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman about the student-led protest at Columbia University in the US, where hundreds slept in tents on campus to demand the university divest from Israel.

Produced by Alana Hadid's Watermelon Pictures, the tweet that shared the clip mentions that the film is also produced by rap artist Macklemore, who has been vocal in his support of Palestine.

Khalil, who has been detained since March 9 and faces deportation, helped to lead Columbia University’s student camp movement. He has been detained by federal immigration authorities despite having a green card.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday that the administration moved to deport him under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the Secretary of State the power to deport a non-citizen on foreign policy grounds.

No information about Khalil's original nationality has been released. Al Jazeera reported that he is Algerian of Palestinian descent. After his detainment, hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside a federal courthouse in New York to support Khalil, whose wife is eight months pregnant with their first child.

Speaking to The National after the hearing, Diala Shamas, one of Khalil's lawyers, said the US government appears to be determined to keep him away from his legal team.

“Essentially, the government is trying to remove him to Louisiana, far away from his legal counsel, in order to expedite his removal proceedings over there, in highly unusual circumstances,” Shamas said. “Certainly it's interfering in his access to counsel.”