My name is

Amolson.

I'm the executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey.

Give us a sense of your feeling and what's going on right now.

It's a really proud day for New Jersey.

You know, New Jersey is leading the way.

After the CalA decision out of Louisiana, out of the Supreme Court, we knew that we needed to do something.

And of course, we've been working on this for like four years to try to get a state version of the Voting Rights Act passed into law.

But can you kind of break down the nexus of how this is happening, where this 15-year, billion-dollar contract to run Delaney Hall seems to have no humanitarian checks and balances?

Look, one of the main differences between immigration law and U.S. criminal law is that in the criminal system, people, defendants are entitled to an attorney.

In the immigration system, they are not.

And so what we need to do is make sure that everybody that needs an attorney in New Jersey is able to access one.

And that's through a program called the Detention and Deportation Defense Initiative.

That program is only partially funded right now.

And we need to make sure that it's fully funded so that everybody has access to counsel.

Are legislators doing what they should be at the state level there? And is there anything else they can do that they haven't thought of?

And what is that case? And talk about the significance of New Jersey in his case, where you are head of the ACLU.

Yeah.

Um, look, the, the, the situation is this, the Trump administration is going after people that it disagrees with.

And Mahmoud was the first person that arrested, um, by... because of his advocacy, uh, for Palestinian human rights.

And he has been incarcerated for 107 days because of, uh, because the Trump administration chose to retaliate against him for his ideas and his speech, not because they could provide any evidence of any criminal activity, not because he was, uh, incarcerated for any immigration violation.

They were claiming that he violated the foreign policy interests of the United States, but provided no evidence to support that allegation.

Um, uh, you know, the importance of New Jersey here is that, uh, the, the case... because he was initially detained in New Jersey, the case has been transferred to the District of New Jersey.

Detained in New York, but brought to New Jersey?

What was it like for you to see your client finally free after 104 days?

I feel a sense of profound relief, uh, relief that Mahmoud will now be able to be with his wife and his newborn son.

Even though he missed those precious early moments of having a newborn child, uh, he's now able to be with his family.

So I feel a sense of outright relief and joy for him.

I also feel outrage.

I'm outraged that this ever even happened, that he was detained for over 100 days, unconstitutionally, illegally, uh, for expressing his First Amendment rights, uh, on behalf of Palestinians and, and human rights.

And, you know, the Trump administration has made it a, uh, a key agenda for, uh, for this government to target people based on their speech, not based on their actions, not based on any evidence of criminality, but based on the views that they hold and the speech that they advocate for.

... who have their criticisms of what happened on Columbia's campus last spring, what would you say to them about why the protection of his speech should matter and what the broader implications of the federal government's actions against people like him represents?