US judge orders release of Columbia student arrested by immigration officers

Mohsen Mahdawi, a student at Columbia University, emerged as a prominent critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in the months after the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas. Photo / Washington Post, Michael Denmeade

• Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student, was detained at his citizenship interview in Vermont.
• Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered the release of Mahdawi, who claimed his detention was retaliation for his pro-Palestinian activism.
• The Trump administration seeks to deport Mahdawi, alleging his activism undermines US foreign policy.

A US District Judge has ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a permanent resident who was detained at his citizenship interview last month as part of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists by the Trump administration.

Mahdawi, 34, is a student at Columbia University who settled in Vermont in 2014. He emerged as a prominent critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in the months after the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.

US District Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford said at a hearing Thursday that Mahdawi had made “substantial claims that his detention is the result of a retaliation for protected speech that he engaged in as a college student on the Columbia campus”.

In a strongly worded order, Judge Crawford noted what he called the “extraordinary setting” of the case, a time when “legal residents – not charged with crimes or misconduct – are being arrested and threatened for stating their views on the political issues of the day”.

Judge Crawford likened the current climate to the McCarthy era of the 1950s and the Red Scare around the end of World War I. “The wheel of history has come round again, but as before, these times of excess will pass,” he wrote.

Judge Crawford, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, ordered Mahdawi released on bond while his federal habeas corpus petition and his immigration proceeding continue.

Outside the courthouse, there was exultation as Mahdawi addressed hundreds of supporters while wearing a suit with a kaffiyeh, a symbol of the Palestinian cause, draped around his shoulders.

“I am saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” Mahdawi said. “Never give up on the idea that justice will prevail.”

Since April 14, Mahdawi had been held in a prison north of Burlington. The Trump administration is seeking to deport him using an obscure provision of immigration law that allows the removal of a person whose presence is deemed to undermine US foreign policy. The Government has not accused Mahdawi of a crime.

Mahdawi’s lawyers say federal agents gave him a notice from the Department of Homeland Security with a form attached accusing him of engaging in “anti-Semitic conduct through leading pro-Palestinian protests and calling for Israel’s destruction”. A memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio alleges Mahdawi engaged in “threatening rhetoric and intimidation of pro-Israeli bystanders”, something his lawyers deny.

Mahdawi organised and spoke at campus protests but stepped back from activism at Columbia in March 2024, his lawyers said in a court filing. Mahdawi’s supporters also noted that at a protest in 2023, he forcefully denounced a person making anti-Semitic remarks, an interaction described by the Columbia Spectator.

Since last fall, Mahdawi has met weekly with a group of Israeli students at Columbia to discuss a peaceful resolution to the conflict. This month, more than 200 Israelis living in the US signed an open letter condemning his arrest.

After Mahdawi arrived for his naturalisation interview at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Vermont on April 14, he was taken into custody by masked agents. The same day, agents drove him to the airport in Burlington with the goal of flying him to Louisiana, his lawyers said. Several other international students involved in pro-Palestinian campus activism, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, have been sent to detention centres in that state.

Mahdawi missed the flight by nine minutes, he told a crowd outside the courthouse. Around the same time, a Vermont judge issued an order telling the Government not to remove him from the state in response to an emergency motion filed by Mahdawi’s lawyers.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to a question about where the agents were taking Mahdawi.

“The Trump Administration is committed to restoring the rule of law to our immigration system,” McLaughlin said in a statement Thursday. “No lawsuit, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.” A State Department spokesperson previously declined to comment on ongoing litigation. Prosecutors indicated they will appeal Crawford’s order.

At Thursday’s hearing inside a packed courtroom, Crawford said the Government had failed to show that Mahdawi was a danger to the community or a flight risk.

Prosecutors submitted a police report from 2015 alleging Mahdawi had made inflammatory comments; the FBI investigated and took no further action. In a sworn statement, Mahdawi denied making the comments. His lawyer called them “cartoonishly racist hearsay”.

Crawford pointed to the more than 125 letters submitted on Mahdawi’s behalf by neighbours, professors and friends, many of them Jewish, attesting to his “commitment to principles of nonviolence”.

Mahdawi, who was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank, met and married an American woman who studied medicine at Dartmouth College. He received his green card in 2015 and the couple later divorced. He became a practising Buddhist. At Columbia, he majored in philosophy and was set to graduate next month.

Inside the courtroom, Mahdawi embraced his lawyers after the judge announced his order. Within minutes, Mahdawi was outside under a sunny sky addressing the crowd. He gathered with others in a circle, their arms around one another, and sang We Shall Overcome.

Asked what he was most looking forward to after more than two weeks in prison, Mahdawi smiled and looked up. “Nature,” he said.