On April 14, 2025, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Mohsen Mahdawi, a undergraduate philosophy major at Columbia University and lawful permanent resident of the United States (aka a green card holder), in apparent retaliation for his pro-Palestinian student expression.
Mahdawi, a Palestinian born in the West Bank, moved to the United States in 2014 and became a permanent resident the following year. He was scheduled to receive his undergraduate diploma in May 2025 and planned to begin a masters degree program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in the fall 2025. While at Columbia, he co-founded the Palestinian Student Union and Columbia University Apartheid Divest, but reportedly became less active in student organizing around May 2024, before the pro-Palestinian encampments were erected on campus.
On April 14, Mahdawi arrived at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester, Vermont for a pre-scheduled appointment to take his citizenship test. There, ICE agents took him into custody. ICE attempted to transport him immediately to Louisiana, where the agency has moved other students detained under similar circumstances (see, for instance, the reports on the cases of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk), but the group missed the intended flight after Mahdawi went to the bathroom feeling ill. A federal judge in Vermont, William K. Sessions III, issued a restraining order barring ICE from transporting him out of the state. On April 23, US District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford extended the restraining order barring Mahdawi’s removal from Vermont for an additional 90 days. On April 30, Judge Crawford ruled that Mahdawi could be released on bail.
Mahdawi has not been charged with a crime. He had been held under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that purportedly grants the US secretary of state the power to deport any individual whose presence in the US poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” (This is the same section used to justify the government’s detention of several other student visa and green card holders.) According to his lawyer, the US government has alleged that Mahdawi’s involvement in pro-Palestinian protests equated to anti-Semitic conduct. The government has not presented any evidence of ant-Semitic acts by Mahdawi and has not distinguished legally protected free expression from allegedly improper conduct.
Scholars at Risk is concerned about the detention and attempt to deport a student and legal resident in retaliation for his exercise of the rights to free expression and free association. Authorities have an obligation to refrain from sanctioning or otherwise retaliating against individuals based on their nonviolent expressive activity and must ensure that any legal or immigration procedures follow due process. The use of the justice or immigration systems to punish nonviolent student expression undermines academic freedom and democratic society generally.
Sources:
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-palestine-protest-trump-deportation-columbia-fca7e73fe2cbd616c1eacf3bdececdbe
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/nyregion/columbia-student-palestinian-arrested-ice.html
https://theintercept.com/2025/04/14/ice-columbia-student-mohsen-mahdawi-citizenship-interview/
https://zeteo.com/p/ice-ambushed-mohsen-mahdawi-in-a
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/04/23/columbia-student-ice-mohsen-mahdawi/
https://vtdigger.org/2025/04/23/lawyers-for-mohsen-mahdawi-detained-palestinian-vermonter-argue-for-his-release/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/nyregion/columbia-student-mohsen-mahdawi-freed.html