Columbia Student Arrested During Citizenship Interview
A Palestinian Columbia student was arrested during a citizenship interview Monday after being targeted for months by several far-right pro-Israel groups.
Mohsen K. Mahdawi was taken into custody at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester, Vermont, as the Intercept reported and independent journalist Christopher Helali caught on video.
Advertisement
A federal judge, responding to a request from Mahdawi’s lawyers, quickly issued a temporary restraining order that he “not be removed from the United States or moved out of the territory of the District of Vermont pending further order of this Court.”
Soon after Mahdawi’s arrest, Vermont’s congressional delegation released a statement calling it “immoral, inhumane, and illegal,” and said he must be afforded due process and “immediately” released from detention.
Advertisement
Mahdawi is a lawful permanent resident of the United States — a green card holder — who has lived in the country for a decade and was seeking citizenship. The Intercept reported that Mahdawi now faces potential deportation to the West Bank, which the Columbia student told the outlet was “kind of a death sentence … because my people are being killed unjustly in an indiscriminate way.”
He is also a well-known activist presence on Columbia’s campus and has been interviewed by 60 Minutes, AJ+ and other outlets.
And he had been targeted by far-right pro-Israel groups like Betar for months.
Last month, Mahdawi’s was one of three names that “we have submitted to the Trump administration” for potential targeting, Betar told HuffPost in an email at the time. Another name on the list was Momodou Taal, who soon after filed suit in an attempt to stop his own deportation. Ultimately, Taal left the United States “free and with my head held high.”
Advertisement
“We confirm having repeatedly provided information on Mohaen Mahdawi,” the group said in an email in response to HuffPost’s questions Monday, apparently misspelling Mahdawi’s first name. Betar said it expected the other person it named in its March email, as well as “multiple U mass Amherst staff and students,” would soon be arrested as well, “we believe.”
The group said, “We have nothing to apologize for,” adding: “As the forefather of Zionism, Ze’ev Jabotinsky said in 1911, No Apologies.”
Canary Mission, an expansive website devoted to cataloguing people and groups that supposedly “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews,” had also written about Mahdawi.
Advertisement
On Monday morning, Mahdawi filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court of Vermont, the Intercept reported. (Habeas corpus is the legal principle that detention must be legally justified.)
The petition states that it “appears” Mahdawi could potentially be removed from the country pursuant to the same portion of immigration law that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has used to target others for their speech alone, even without any evidence (or allegation) of a crime.
The language allows Rubio to pursue the deportation of those “whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
Advertisement
“Public statements up by government officials, including statements by the President and Secretary of State, establish that Respondents have detained Mr. Mahdawi to punish and silence him because of his constitutionally protected speech, beliefs, statements and associations,” Mahdawi’s legal team wrote in the petition before arguing that his arrest violated the First and Fifth Amendments, among other alleged violations, and that he should be released.
Judge William K. Sessions III, a Clinton nominee, quickly granted a temporary restraining order sought by Mahdawi’s lawyers, preventing his transport out of the state without the judge’s approval.
Neither the State Department, Department of Homeland Security nor the White House immediately responded to a comment request.
Advertisement
Mahdawi, who was born in the West Bank, became a lawful permanent U.S. resident in 2015 and enrolled at Columbia in 2021, studying philosophy and completing the program last year. He had an expected May 2025 graduation date and planned to pursue a master’s degree in international affairs at the university after that, according to the court filing.
“Mohsen Mahdawi was unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity,” Mahdawi’s attorney Luna Droubi told The Intercept in a statement. “He came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech.”
Though he was targeted by pro-Israel groups for his activism, those groups often misrepresent criticism of Israel as bigotry against Jews, as the Trump administration has also done in seeking the deportation of certain students.
Advertisement
And Mahdawi — like plenty of others targeted by those groups and the administration — does not have a record of antisemitism.
The Intercept noted that last spring, Mahdawi “said he took a step back from the movement to focus on building bridges with Jewish and Israeli communities on campus.” In November 2023, after an unidentified person “began screaming antisemitic and anti-Black statements” at a protest on Columbia’s campus, Mahdawi denounced the outburst, telling the crowd through a megaphone, “Shame on the person who called [for] ‘death to Jews,’” the Columbia Spectator reported.
We Don’t Work For Billionaires. We Work For You.
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Mahdawi appeared to know he was being targeted for potential arrest. According to The Intercept, he “sheltered in place” for three weeks after the arrest of his friend and fellow Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, with whom Mahdawi cofounded the Columbia Palestinian Student Union in 2023.
Advertisement
He also unsuccessfully sought accommodations from Columbia to protect against his arrest by ICE agents and reached out to several elected representatives ahead of his citizenship interview, according to the report. Late last year, an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force official visited Mahdawi’s apartment, The Intercept reported.
Comments are closed.