'Immoral, Inhumane, and Illegal': ICE Arrests Palestinian Columbia Protest Leader

A month after the international far-right pro-Israel group Betar named Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi as the next target in its campaign to push for the deportation of Palestinian rights defenders, Mahdawi was arrested Monday at an immigration office in Colchester, Vermont, where he had arrived to complete a test to be a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Mahdawi, who had held a green card for 10 years, was a leader of protests at Columbia last year where students called for the school to divest from companies that benefit from Israel's policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.

As The Intercept reported, immigration authorities scheduled Mahdawi's citizenship test around the time that Mahmoud Khalil, another leader of campus protests at Columbia, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March.

The appointment, said media critic Sana Saeed, was "a trap to abduct him."

Vermont's three members of Congress—Democrats Sen. Peter Welch and Rep. Becca Balint and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders—called the arrest of the White River Junction resident "immoral, inhumane, and illegal."

"He was arrested and removed in handcuffs by plain-clothed, armed, individuals with their faces covered," said the lawmakers. "These individuals refused to provide any information as to where he was being taken or what would happen to him... Mr. Mahdawi, a legal resident of the United States, must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention."

Khalil, Mahdawi, and several other Columbia students have been targeted for deportation under President Donald Trump's executive orders that purport to be aimed at ridding U.S. college campuses of what the administration deems "antisemitism," and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's "catch and revoke" program.

In an interview with "60 Minutes" on CBS in December 2023, Mahdawi spoke about how campus protests the previous month in support of Palestinian rights had been infiltrated by someone who was not affiliated with Columbia and who shouted antisemitic chants.

"I was shocked, and I walked directly to the person, and I told him, 'You don't represent us,' because this is not something that we agree with," he said. "To be antisemitic is unjust. And the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

After Betar began posting on social media about Mahdawi, he went into hiding and corresponded with Columbia asking officials to move him to a safe location. Mahdawi's lawyer told The Intercept that the school said it could not move him to housing where he would be protected from ICE.

Mahdawi suspected that an email last month from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), stating that his citizenship test was being moved up by several months, was a sign that immigration authorities were planning to "trap" him in order to detain him and try to deport him to the West Bank, where he is from.

He called the three members of Congress from Vermont, and spoke to Welch personally, asking them to intervene if he was targeted by ICE. The three lawmakers and their offices said at the time that they "would remain on standby pending news of Mahdawi's status after the [immigration] interview," according to The Intercept.

"We strongly condemn the Trump administration for abducting Mohsen Mahdawi, a lawful permanent resident, because he exercised his constitutional right to criticize the Israeli government's war crimes," said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "By abducting and imprisoning college students for engaging in free speech, the Trump administration is acting like an arm of the Israeli government, which regularly censors free speech and imprisons its critics. We demand the release of Mohsen and every other student who has been wrongly abducted."

"All Americans should be alarmed at the speed of attacks on basic constitutional freedoms of lawful residents in the U.S.," Mitchell added.

Lawyers for Mahdawi filed a habeus corpus petition on Monday, saying the government had violated his statutory and due process rights by punishing him for speech.

"Mohsen Mahdawi was unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity," Mahdawi's attorney, Luna Droubi, told The Intercept. "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."