Sunday in New York, Dr. Noor Abdalla accepted a diploma on behalf of her husband, Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, at an alternative graduation ceremony held by the People’s University for Palestine. Abdalla gave birth to the couple’s first child Deen last month, while Khalil remained imprisoned at a Louisiana ICE detention center over a thousand miles away after he was abducted by ICE from university housing in March. ICE denied Khalil’s request to be present at the birth. “You showed up,” Abdalla said, reading a statement from Khalil addressed to attendees of the crowd. “You reminded me that while institutions may abandon us, the people never will.”