Mahdawi’s lawyer says that the student of Columbia University arrested as ‘retaliation’ for the pro-palestine position.
The United States immigration agents have arrested a Palestinian man who directed demonstrations at Columbia University against Gaza’s War.
A green card holder since 2015, Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested on Monday, since he attended an interview in an immigration office regarding his citizenship application, according to his lawyers. The trial is the last of a controversial repression by the administration of President Donald Trump about the protesters of immigrant students.
Shortly after Mahdawi’s arrest, the district judge William Sessions ordered that they were not tasks of the state of Vermont or the United States.
Senator Bernie Sanders and others from the Vermont Congress delegation labeled the arrest of Mahdawi “immoral, inhuman and illegal”, insisting that due process must be provided and immediately released.
“The Trump administration arrested Mohsen Mahdawi in direct retaliation for his defense in the name of the Palestinians and because identity as Palestine,” said his lawyer, Luna Droubi, who presented a judicial presentation and his statement.
“His arrest is an attempt to silence those who speak against atrocities in Gaza. It is unconstitutional.”
In informing from New York, Kristen Saloomey de Al Jazeera said that the Trump administration seemed to be applying “the same logic” used in the detention of the fellow student of Columbia Mahmoud Khalil, pointing to “anyone considered a threat to the foreign policy of the United States.
Claire Finkelstein, professor of the National Security Law at the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, told Al Jazeera that Mahdawi’s future is still uncertain.
“We do not know, from now on … whether or not deportation is the procedure and whether or not the administration is listening to the court order,” he said.
‘Imoral, inhuman and illegal’
Mahdawi is co -founder of a group of Palestinian students at Columbia University, together with Khalil.
An American immigration judge in Louisiana ruled on Friday that Khalil can be deported, establishing a precedent for the administration to process with their efforts to deport foreign students, although they are legally in the country and are not accused of the crime.
In depriving, foreign students involved in the protests of the campus last year in the United States against the Israel War against Gaza have been attacked, with the accusing authorities or anti -Semitism.
According to the website within Dehight.com, the State Department has now revoked students of more than 1,000 people in 170 conferences and universities.
In other cases of high profile, immigration officers have stopped and tried to deport Rumeysa Ozturb, a student at Tufts University of Turkiye, and Columbia student Yunnseo Chung, who is a permanent resident of the United States from South Korea.
The American immigration authorities summoned the student of Columbia Mohsen Mahdawi to a citizenship interview in Vermont, and then arrested him free of charge. Now he faces deportation to occupied West Bank. pic.twitter.com/lmmHPL3JNG
– AJ+ (@Ajplus) April 14, 2025
Raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Philosophy student Mahdawi would graduate next month and planned to attend a master’s program in Columbia, said his lawyers.
Saloomey de Al Jazeera recalled the count of Mahdawi al Jazeera last year about previous attempts to intimidate him for his activism.
On one occasion, a “counterprotester” had approached him, saying: “I’m going to take your life. I’m going to kill you.”
Speaking of his experience growing at the busy Bank, Mahdawi had remembered how his uncle was “killed” by the Israeli army and how he had collected the “body parts” of seven Palestinians killed in his camp in the middle of the night.