Columbia student activist rebukes Trump after release from ICE detention: ‘I’m not afraid of you’

Palestinian activist is among dozens of international students marked for deportation by Trump administration

A Columbia University student who was arrested at his citizenship interview and hauled off in handcuffs had some words for Donald Trump’s administration after a federal judge in Vermont ordered his immediate release.

Mohsen Mahdawi, holding up two “peace” signs, was greeted by cheering supporters as he walked out of the courthouse Wednesday.

“To President Trump and his cabinet,” he said. “I am not afraid of you.”

Mohsen Mahdawi speaks outside a federal courthouse in Vermont on April 30 after a judge ordered his immediate release from ICE detention (AP)

Mahdawi, a lawful permanent resident and Palestinian who has held a green card for at least 10 years, was anticipating a scheduled interview as part of his citizenship process on April 14. Instead, hooded federal agents walked him into a car and drove off.

On Wednesday, District Judge Geoffrey Crawford determined that Mahdawi, who hasn’t been charged with any crime, can be released on bail while his legal challenges continue.

Mahdawi — who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, where he lived until moving to the United States in 2014 — is among dozens of student activists marked for removal by the Trump administration over campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

He is among the first of those activists to successfully secure his release while challenging the constitutionality of his arrest and detention in federal court as well as a parallel case in immigration court.

That same Vermont court is also presiding over the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University who remains in a Louisiana detention center.

“This is what justice is. And for anybody who’s doubting justice, this is a light of hope, a hope and faith in the justice system in America,” Mahdawi said outside the courthouse.

“We are pro-peace and anti-war,” he added. “To my people in Palestine: I feel your pain, I see your suffering, and I see freedom and it is very very soon.”

An image taken from a video provided by Christopher Helali shows Mahdawi being detained at a Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester, Vermont, on April 14 (AP)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked hundreds of student visas over campus activism, leading to several high-profile arrests of international scholars who are now awaiting deportation hearings, including in remote jails across the southern United States.

After taking office, Trump signed an executive order that declares U.S. policy is to “ensure” noncitizens “do not … advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.” Another executive order pledges “immediate action” to “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities” with a promise to “deport Hamas sympathizers and revoke student visas,” according to a fact sheet from the White House.

With Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who has been jailed in an ICE detention center in Louisiana for more than a month, Mahdawi helped organize the Palestinian Student Union. Mahdawi’s attorneys describe him as a “committed Buddhist” who “believes in non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion.”

Attorneys argue his arrest and detention is retaliatory and in violation of his First Amendment rights, “indisputably and solely for engaging in lawful, constitutionally protected speech,” ACLU of Vermont legal director Lia Ernst told reporters Tuesday night.

Mahdawi helped “eased tensions on campus, not increased them” and “builds bridges and cultivates understanding across differences,” according to Ernst.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has joined the state’s congressional delegation demanding Mahdawi’s release (Getty Images)

“Look at this record we have amassed and look at the mere absence of record [from] the government,” she added.

“His detention is part and parcel of the Trump administration’s attempt to condition liberty on political views,” according to Shezza Abboushi Dallal, a staff attorney at the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) Project, among the groups defending Mahdawi.

“Mohsen is a ray of light in his communities, and we are so relieved that today he walked out those courtroom doors and back into the arms of his loved ones,” attorney Luna Droubi said in a statement Wednesday.

The government’s “claims and actions are baseless, without evidence, and are a disgrace to the U.S. Constitution. We will keep fighting until Mohsen is free for good,” she said.

In a filmed interview with Vermont Democratic Senator Peter Welch inside an ICE detention center last week, Mahdawi said Rubio’s invocation of a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act to target people who are perceived as threats to foreign policy is conflating “being anti-war as antisemitic.”

“How could that be possible when my partners, most of my partners at Columbia’s campus, and beyond, are Jews and Israelis? My work has been centered on peacemaking,” he said. “My hope and my dream is … to see an end to the war, an end to the killing, and to see a peaceful resolution between Palestinians and Israelis. How could this be a threat to anybody except the war machine that is feeding this?”