Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent student leaders of pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses, recounted his experience surviving 104 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention after being targeted for deportation by the Trump administration, AFP reports.

“I shared a dorm with over 70 men, absolutely no privacy, lights on all the time,” the 30-year-old said on the steps of Columbia University, where he was a graduate student.

“It’s so normal in detention to see men cry,” Khalil recalled, deeming the situation “horrendous” and “a stain on the US Constitution.”

“I spent my days listening to one tragic story after another: listening to a father of four whose wife is battling cancer, and he’s in detention,” Khalil detailed in his first protest appearance since regaining his freedom.

“I listened to a story of an individual who has been in the United States for over 20 years, all his children are American, yet he’s been deported.” The circumstances of the detention were tough, Khalil described, and he took solace where he could find it to gain the strength to carry on.

“At those moments, it was remembering a specific chant that gave me strength : ‘I believe that we will win,’” he continued, to cheers from the audience.

He repeats it even now, “knowing that I have won in a small way by being free today.” Khalil took specific aim at the site of his speech, Columbia University, chastising the institution for saying “that they want to protect their international students, while over 100 (days) later, I haven’t received a single call from this university.”