Vermont's BURLINGTON — A Columbia University student who was arrested by immigration officials and threatened with deportation for his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations was ordered to be released immediately by a federal judge on Wednesday.
As part of a crackdown on international students who were lawfully studying in the US, Mohsen Mahdawi was taken into custody. By claiming that the students' prolonged presence in the nation undermines America's foreign policy objectives, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has targeted some of the students for deportation by invoking a seldom used section of immigration law.
When Mahdawi appeared for a citizenship interview at an immigration office in Vermont on April 14, he was taken into custody.
Shortly after U.S. District Judge William Sessions III ordered his parole, Mahdawi declared outside a federal courthouse, "I am expressing it clear and loud." "I am not frightened of you, President Trump and his Cabinet."
Sessions' ruling only permits Mahdawi to be free while his case is pending; it does not stop the Trump administration's attempt to deport him. The Trump administration has employed this tactic with other detainees, but Sessions, a Clinton appointee, previously prevented immigration officials from moving Mahdawi to a detention center in a more conservative court district.
Although Mahdawi is Palestinian and was raised in the West Bank, he has spent the last ten years in the United States. When he was arrested by immigration officials, he was nearing the end of the process to become a citizen of the United States and had a green card, which allows him to live there legally.
Mahdawi has claimed that the administration is violating the First Amendment by targeting him for his criticism of Israel and participation in campus protests, much like other pro-Palestinian professors and students who have been arrested and thrown into rapid deportation proceedings during President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office.
Mahmoud Khalil, another prominent figure in Columbia's pro-Palestinian demonstrations, has been battling the Trump administration's attempts to deport him for almost two months. Khalil is presently being held in Louisiana and, like Mahdawi, possesses a green card.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who has written critically about Israel, and Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher who was detained in part because his father-in-law was a former adviser to Hamas, are two other academics that the Trump administration is attempting to swiftly deport.
Rubio believes they are all detrimental to U.S. foreign policy goals. The deportation attempt has been met with growing skepticism from courts; on Tuesday, a judge appointed by Reagan decided that a wide First Amendment challenge to the effort may proceed.
However, Mahdawi is thought to be the first student to be ordered out of detention following Rubio's foreign policy ruling.
Requests for comment were not immediately answered by the Homeland Security and State departments.
During a court hearing on Wednesday, Sessions stated that Mahdawi, who lives in Vermont's Upper Valley, had suffered "severe injury" as a result of his two-week detention.
The judge declared, "Even another day of custody is not to be condoned."
Sessions likened the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when scholars were targeted for alleged Communist sympathies, to the Trump administration's persecution of college students for their speech.
“The wheel has come around again,” the judge said.
Sessions determined that Mahdawi did not pose a public safety or flight risk, and under the conditions of his release, he is permitted to continue to attend classes at Columbia in New York. Mahdawi is set to graduate in May and plans to pursue a graduate degree in the fall.
The judge indicated he would issue a written order spelling out more details about the conditions of Mahdawi’s release.
Mahdawi walked out of the courtroom minutes after the judge announced his decision from the bench to a raucous crowd of several hundred supporters, whom he led in several anti-war chants. Mahdawi said that when he was arrested earlier this month, he was immediately driven to the airport to be sent to an out-of-state holding facility — but missed the flight by nine minutes.
“Me standing here in front of you sends a clear message: We the people will hold the Constitution accountable for the principles that we believe in,” Mahdawi said.
