mohsen mahdawi:Columbia Activist Arrested by ICE at His Appointment for Citizenship
hubnews1-Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident, has been in the United States for 10 years and was arrested in Vermont. He has not been charged with a crime.
Mohsen Mahdawi, one of the organizers of pro-Palestinian protests last year at Columbia University, was held by immigration agents on Monday after showing up for an appointment in Vermont that he believed was part of the process to become a U.S. citizen, his attorneys said.
Hours later, Mr. Mahdawi’s mother, older sister and lawyers were scrambling to find him after his abrupt detention at an immigration center in Colchester, Vt. His lawyers requested a temporary restraining order to prevent federal officials from transferring him to a more conservative jurisdiction — a tactic used in the detention and attempted deportation of at least four other college demonstrators.
One of the federal judges in Vermont, William K. Sessions III, quickly granted the request, ordering that Mr. Mahdawi, a vociferous Israeli military campaign in Gaza critic, not be expelled from the United States or routed out of Vermont until he issues a contrary directive. His lawyers reported that to date, they had ascertained that he remained in Vermont.
“Showing their MO,” Mr. Mahdawi’s attorney, Luna Droubi, explained. “They just keep concealing the person to the extent that their lawyers can’t quite figure out or pinpoint where to file. And so, you know, we are flying blind, and they know everything, and yet we are charged with trying to file in the proper jurisdiction.”
A 10-year green card holder, Mr. Mahdawi is the latest of a series of Palestinian students ensnared by the Trump administration dragnet that has been sweeping up foreign students who are participating in pro-Palestinian organizing on U.S. campuses.
Mr. Mahdawi was born and raised within a refugee camp in the West Bank, where he resided until he emigrated to the United States in 2014, his lawyers stated in a Monday petition calling for his release. His arrest was initially reported by The Intercept.
He is completing his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Columbia’s School of General Studies and was going to enter as a master’s degree student at its school of international affairs this fall.
Columbia representatives would not comment, citing federal student privacy laws.
Mr. Mahdawi is not charged with a crime. His lawyers say that the Trump administration seems to be pursuing his deportation under the same provision of law that it is applying to detain another recent Columbia student and Palestinian, Mahmoud Khalil, arguing that his presence
poses a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States. Immigration authorities have contended that pro-Palestinian protesters have facilitated the proliferation of antisemitism, but they have not provided evidence to support the allegation.
Following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Mr. Mahdawi, then a mid-30s man, co-founded with Mr. Khalil Dar: the Palestinian Student Society at Columbia University to “celebrate Palestinian culture, history and identity,” his lawyers petitioned. Mr. Mahdawi also was a co-founder of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a larger collective that continued and organized many campus pro-Palestinian protests that forced the university to divest from Israel.
But Mr. Mahdawi stepped back from student activism in March 2024, prior to the formation of encampments on campus and the occupation of a campus building, Hamilton Hall. In interviews then, he stated that this was motivated partially by his immigration status and his practices as a Buddhist. He served as the president of the Columbia University Buddhist Association for two years.
He publicly described his childhood experience of witnessing his closest friend being shot and killed by an Israeli soldier, noting it in a “60 Minutes” interview in December 2023. But he added that he desired a nonviolent resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“My motivation comes out of love now, not out of anger, not out of hate,” he told an interviewer.
As with Mr. Khalil, several hard-line pro-Israel groups have been agitating online for Mr. Mahdawi’s detention and deportation since President Trump’s return to the White House.
Betar USA, one of those groups, posted on X on Jan. 30 that “visa holder Mohsen Mahdawi is on our deport list.” In March, they repeated that, posting “Mohsen Mahdawi is next and also on the deport list.”
He was also profiled by Canary Mission, a similar organization that listed students and demanded action to be taken against individuals they claim are pro-Hamas.
On Monday morning, Mr. Mahdawi reported for an interview he was informed was on his naturalization. Instead, immigration officials, some of whose faces were hidden, handcuffed Mr. Mahdawi and took him away, said a Monday statement by Vermont’s two senators, Bernie Sanders, an Independent, and Peter Welch, a Democrat, and Representative Becca Balint, a Democrat.
Mr. Mahdawi, whose home address is White River Junction, Vt., had approached the lawmakers prior to his appointment in fear of the worst.
They condemned his arrest and called for his release.
This is immoral, inhumane, and illegal,” the three lawmakers said in a statement. “Mr. Mahdawi, a legal resident of the United States, must be given due process under the law and released from detention immediately.”
Mr. Mahdawi’s friend Mikey Baratz described him as deeply empathetic and said that, at his core, Mr. Mahdawi believed that all humans deserved to be treated with dignity. Mr. Mahdawi reached out to Mr. Baratz about six months ago because he wanted to meet Israeli students at Columbia — Mr. Baratz is Jewish and was born and raised in Israel until he left at the age of 12.
They spent hours discussing their lives and discovered surprising common ground. Mr. Baratz, a December graduate of Columbia with a master’s in international security policy, recently interviewed at The New York Times.
This is a Palestinian.Mohsen Mahdawi I’m an Israeli. Our people are at war,” Mr. Baratz, 31, said. “And his willingness to actually hear and actively learn and understand the Israeli experience — I mean, I’ve never met anyone who so quickly was willing to take feedback.
el salvador prison,Bukele says Trump has 350 million Americans to ‘liberate’ by ending crime, terrorism
El Salvador prison,Bukele claims Trump has 350 million Americans to ‘liberate’ by making crime, terrorism cease. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele instructed President Donald Trump during the Oval Office meeting on Monday that he has 350 million Americans to “liberate” by stopping crime and terrorism in America.
“We recognize that you have a crime issue and a terrorist issue that you require assistance with. And we’re a small nation, but we are able to assist,” Bukele stated. “We really converted the murder capital of the globe — that was [what] the media referred to it as– the murder capital of the world into the safest nation in the Western Hemisphere.”
“And I like to say that we actually liberated millions,” Bukele added, a line that received praise from Trump.
Mr. President, you have 350 million to free,” Bukele said to Trump. “You can’t just, you know, free the criminals and expect crime to decrease magically, you have to jail them so you can free 350 million Americans that are requesting the end of terrorism and the end of crime, and it can be done.”
The Trump government has been colluding with Bukele to organize deportation flights, taking hundreds, including reported members of Tren de Aragua gangs, to El Salvador’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, referred to as CECOT.
Trump’s 2024 campaign criticized Biden’s catch-and-release border strategies, as well as liberal bail reform legislation throughout most Democratic locales that compelled the police to turn suspects loose again onto the streets, frequently to commit more crime.
Trump on Monday mocked the “Democratic establishment,”El Salvador prison, celebrating how the nation would now be governed by “common sense” following his election.
“Do you let your men in women’s sports? Do you let men box women?” Trump asked Bukele, alluding to how the left has advocated for biological men to compete in women’s sports.
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That’s woman abuse,” Trump concurred. “But we have individuals who fight to the death because they believe men should be able to compete in women’s sports.”
Ten or so years ago, Bukele stated, the women’s rights movement fought to have laws on the books to keep men from abusing women, claiming that now the “same people are trying to take a step back.”
“We’re huge on defending women,” Bukele said, adding that the majority of his Cabinet members who are in the Oval Office with him are women, and jokingly, “they’re not DEI hires or anything.”
Trump also advocated for women in his own Cabinet, appointing Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
“The world’s most powerful woman, at least according to magazines,” Trump said of Wiles. “I believe she probably is.”
Noem,El Salvador prison, who toured the CECOT last month, expressed her gratitude to Bukele for his collaboration, stating Trump has issued a “powerful message of consequences” in discouraging criminals, rapists, murderers, gang members and terrorists from entering the U.S.
Trump stated the Biden administration opened the border to “come freely into our country” from South America, Africa, Asia and “tough parts of Europe,” stating many coming through came from prisons and mental facilities, and gangs.Mohsen Mahdawi,
“This was permitted by a man who — what he did to our country is just unbelievable,” Trump referred to previous President Joe Biden. “So we’re straightening it out. We’re getting them out. But what they did and what that party did to our country, open borders, anybody could come in. As soon as I heard that, I said, ‘every prison is going to be emptied out into our country.’ That’s what happened. And we’re straightening it out.”
When asked how many we can get out of our country that were let in here by incompetent Joe Biden through open borders.”
Trump refuany illegal aliens his administration would send back to El Salvador, Trump replied, “as sed to exclude shipping U.S. citizens or legally naturalized immigrants who commit violent offenses in the U.S. to El Salvador, but indicated Bondi and the Justice Department were still “studying the law” on that possible route of action.
El Salvador prison,“They’re as bad as anyone who comes in. We have some bad ones too. And I’m for it because we can do things with the president at less cost and have excellent security,” Trump remarked. “I’m talking about extremely bad people.”
‘Obviously illegal’: Experts pan Trump’s plan to deport U.S. citizens
If an immigrant the government says is a gang member can be deported to El Salvador without due process protections, then why not an American citizen?
That was the dystopian scenario immigration activists and constitutional law specialists were pondering on Monday after President Donald Trump once again floated a inflammatory proposal to deport U.S. citizens who have been convicted of crimes without specifying what they are.
Trump brought the matter up with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele during a White House meeting, who will accept individuals deported from the U.S. into a notorious prison.
We always have to follow the law, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit old ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not paying attention, that are just absolute monsters,” Trump said to reporters. “I’d like to include them.
Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reported that Trump wanted to deport “heinous, violent criminals” who are American citizens to El Salvador “if there’s a legal pathway to do that.”
It is not known if the administration was talking only about naturalized citizens. Naturalized citizens in exceptional situations may have their citizenship taken away from them if, for instance, they procured it through deception.
Trump, in Monday’s White House meeting, indicated that Attorney General Pam Bondi is “studying the law.”
The White House and Justice Department did not return messages for further information about the proposal.
“It is quite clearly illegal and unconstitutional,” said Ilya Somin, a George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School professor.
Immigration law that provides for the deportation authority of the government simply doesn’t apply to citizens of the U.S., said Emma Winger, a legal counsel with the American Immigration Council, a non-profit lobbying group.
Anthony Kreis, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, pointed out that the British policy of taking certain alleged criminals out of colonies to stand trial elsewhere was one of the complaints in the run-up to the American Revolution.
“I don’t see how it’s okay to exile someone as part of the package of rights that are essential to citizenship — twice over if the attempt to provide shelter for American citizens abroad means handing someone over to a foreign power,” he continued.
David Bier, an immigration analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said Trump’s comments illustrate how “absolutely critical it is for the courts to put an immediate stop to this extrajudicial imprisonment by foreign proxy.”
“U.S. citizens cannot be deported to imprisonment overseas. There is no provision for that in any U.S. law,” he added.
The U.S. government claims that the individuals sent to El Salvador are violent gang members, though some have been deported without courts having the ability to decide if they were properly identified, which presents serious constitutional concerns.
In one of the cases stemming from Trump’s attempt to use a war-time measure known as the Alien Enemies Act, the Supreme Court has already determined that individuals targeted for such deportations enjoy due process rights.
In a concurring opinion in the same case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor discussed the far-reaching nature of some of the government’s positions.
“The implication of the government’s position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens might be removed from the streets, placed on planes, and sent to foreign prisons with no hope of redress if judicial review is withheld illegally prior to removal,” she wrote.
The concurrent legal controversy surrounding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal immigrant the Justice Department has acknowledged was inappropriately deported to El Salvador, also is relevant to any plan to deport American citizens.
Abrego Garcia was not convicted or charged with any crimes in the United States or El Salvador and was deported to El Salvador before courts could act to ensure that he could vindicate his due process rights. The government claims he is a member of the MS-13 gang.
Even though a judge has ruled that Abrego Garcia be repatriated, the Trump administration is now claiming that he is beyond their jurisdiction and that it is entirely up to El Salvador whether or not he is returned.
The Supreme Court also had its say, stating that while the government was bound to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, the courts must not encroach on the president’s discretion to make foreign policy.
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If that logic is applied to U.S. citizens, they could potentially be summarily deported without being able to contest it. While Trump has indicated he would only wish to target criminals, there
there is similarly no reason the government needs to treat others who have not been convicted of crimes any differently.
“The U.S. government has already sent a person to this prison illegally and asserted no avenue of recourse to retrieve them, so the courts need to close down this unconstitutional train wreck before U.S. citizens are illegally ensnared in it,” Bier said.
In the U.S., prisoners retain fundamental constitutional rights and routinely appeal their convictions and conditions of confinement. Whether they have such rights if they are detained in a foreign prison is uncertain.
Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reported during an event in Phoenix that Bukele informed her that individuals sent to the prison in El Salvador “will never leave.”
Trump’s proposal is “another reason why courts need to compel Trump to restore Abrego Garcia and others illegally deported to jail in El Salvador,” Mohsen Mahdawi,Somin, the law professor, said
FAQ:
1. Who is Mohsen Mahdawi?
Mohsen Mahdawi is a well-known activist and member of the Columbia University community. He has been involved in advocacy work, particularly focusing on immigrant rights and social justice.
2. Why was Mohsen Mahdawi arrested by ICE?
Mohsen Mahdawi was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a scheduled appointment for his citizenship process. The exact reasons for his arrest are unclear, but it has sparked outrage among immigrant rights advocates.
3. Was Mohsen Mahdawi eligible for citizenship?
Reports indicate that Mahdawi was in the process of applying for U.S. citizenship and was attending a required appointment when he was detained. His legal status and eligibility are still under scrutiny.
4. How has the community responded?
Activists, students, and immigrant rights organizations have condemned the arrest, calling it an unjust targeting of an individual who was following legal procedures. Protests and petitions demanding his release have been organized.
5. What can I do to help?
You can support by:
- Sharing information about his case on social media.
- Contacting local representatives to demand transparency.
- Donating to legal defense funds supporting immigrants facing deportation.
6. Where can I find updates on his case?
Follow trusted news sources, immigrant rights organizations, and official statements from Columbia University-affiliated groups for the latest developments.
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