Mahdawi’s lawyer says Columbia University student detained as ‘retaliation’ for pro-Palestinian stance.
United States immigration agents have arrested a Palestinian man who led demonstrations at Columbia University against the war on Gaza.
A green card holder since 2015, Mohsen Mahdawi was detained on Monday as he attended an interview at an immigration office regarding his application for citizenship, according to his lawyers. The arrest is the latest in a controversial crackdown by the administration of President Donald Trump on immigrant student protesters.
Shortly after Mahdawi’s detention, District Judge William Sessions ordered that he must not be taken from the state of Vermont or the US.
Senator Bernie Sanders and others from Vermont’s congressional delegation labelled Mahdawi’s detention “immoral, inhumane, and illegal”, insisting that he must be afforded due process and released immediately.
“The Trump administration detained Mohsen Mahdawi in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and because of his identity as a Palestinian,” said his lawyer, Luna Droubi, who has submitted a court filing seeking his release and a halt to deportation proceedings.
“His detention is an attempt to silence those who speak out against the atrocities in Gaza. It is unconstitutional.”
Reporting from New York, Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey said the Trump administration appeared to be applying “the same rationale” used in the detention of fellow Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, targeting “anyone deemed a threat to US foreign policy interests”.
Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, told Al Jazeera that Mahdawi’s future remains uncertain.
“We do not know, as of right now … whether or not the deportation is proceeding and whether or not the administration is actually going to listen to the court order,” she said.
‘Immoral, inhumane, and illegal’
Mahdawi is the co-founder of a Palestinian student group at Columbia University, alongside Khalil.
A US immigration judge in Louisiana ruled on Friday that Khalil can be deported, setting a precedent for the administration to proceed with its efforts to deport dissenting foreign students, despite them being in the country legally and not being charged with any crime.
In particular, foreign students involved in last year’s campus protests across the US against Israel’s war on Gaza have been targeted, with authorities accusing them of anti-Semitism.
According to the website Insidehighered.com, the State Department has now revoked the student visas of more than 1,000 people at 170 colleges and universities.
In other high-profile cases, immigration officers have detained and sought to deport Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student from Turkiye, and Columbia student Yunseo Chung, who is a US permanent resident originally from South Korea.
U.S. immigration authorities summoned Columbia student leader Mohsen Mahdawi to a citizenship interview in Vermont – and then detained him without charge. He now faces deportation to the occupied West Bank. pic.twitter.com/LMmhpl3jnG
— AJ+ (@ajplus) April 14, 2025
Raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, philosophy student Mahdawi was set to graduate next month, and planned to go on to attend a Columbia master’s program, his lawyers said.
Al Jazeera’s Saloomey recalled Mahdawi telling Al Jazeera last year about previous attempts to intimidate him for his activism.
On one occasion, a “counter-protester” had approached him, saying: “I’m going to take your life. I’m going to kill you.”
Speaking of his experience growing up in the occupied West Bank, Mahdawi had recalled how his uncle was “assassinated” by the Israeli army and how he had collected the “body parts” of seven Palestinians killed in his camp in the middle of the night.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/15/palestinian-student-arrested-at-us-citizenship-interview-over-gaza-protests?traffic_source=rss
