Mahdawi’s lawyer says Columbia College pupil detained as ‘retaliation’ for pro-Palestinian stance.
United States immigration brokers have arrested a Palestinian man who led demonstrations at Columbia College in opposition to the conflict on Gaza.
A inexperienced card holder since 2015, Mohsen Mahdawi was detained on Monday as he attended an interview at an immigration workplace concerning his software for citizenship, based on his attorneys. The arrest is the most recent in a controversial crackdown by the administration of President Donald Trump on immigrant pupil protesters.
Shortly after Mahdawi’s detention, District Choose William Classes ordered that he should 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 unlawful”, insisting that he have to be afforded due course of and launched instantly.
“The Trump administration detained Mohsen Mahdawi in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and due to his id as a Palestinian,” mentioned his lawyer, Luna Droubi, who has submitted a court docket submitting looking for his launch and a halt to deportation proceedings.
“His detention is an try to silence those that communicate out in opposition to the atrocities in Gaza. It’s unconstitutional.”
Reporting from New York, Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey mentioned the Trump administration gave the impression to be making use of “the identical rationale” used within the detention of fellow Columbia College pupil Mahmoud Khalil, focusing on “anybody deemed a risk to US international coverage pursuits”.
Claire Finkelstein, a professor of nationwide safety legislation on the College of Pennsylvania Regulation Faculty, instructed Al Jazeera that Mahdawi’s future stays unsure.
“We have no idea, as of proper now … whether or not or not the deportation is continuing and whether or not or not the administration is definitely going to hearken to the court docket order,” she mentioned.
‘Immoral, inhumane, and unlawful’
Mahdawi is the co-founder of a Palestinian pupil group at Columbia College, alongside Khalil.
A US immigration choose in Louisiana dominated on Friday that Khalil might be deported, setting a precedent for the administration to proceed with its efforts to deport dissenting international college students, regardless of them being within the nation legally and never being charged with any crime.
Specifically, international college students concerned in final 12 months’s campus protests throughout the US against Israel’s war on Gaza have been focused, with authorities accusing them of anti-Semitism.
In keeping with the web site Insidehighered.com, the State Division has now revoked the scholar visas of greater than 1,000 folks at 170 faculties and universities.
In different high-profile circumstances, immigration officers have detained and sought to deport Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts College pupil from Turkiye, and Columbia pupil Yunseo Chung, who’s a US everlasting resident initially from South Korea.
U.S. immigration authorities summoned Columbia pupil chief Mohsen Mahdawi to a citizenship interview in Vermont – after which detained him with out cost. He now faces deportation to the occupied West Financial institution. pic.twitter.com/LMmhpl3jnG
— AJ+ (@ajplus) April 14, 2025
Raised in a refugee camp within the occupied West Financial institution, philosophy pupil Mahdawi was set to graduate subsequent month, and deliberate to go on to attend a Columbia grasp’s program, his attorneys mentioned.
Al Jazeera’s Saloomey recalled Mahdawi telling Al Jazeera final 12 months about earlier makes an attempt to intimidate him for his activism.
On one event, a “counter-protester” had approached him, saying: “I’m going to take your life. I’m going to kill you.”
Talking of his expertise rising up within the occupied West Financial institution, Mahdawi had recalled how his uncle was “assassinated” by the Israeli military and the way he had collected the “physique components” of seven Palestinians killed in his camp in the midst of the evening.
