US judge orders release of detained Palestinian Columbia University student
A US federal judge has ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia University student and a lawful permanent US resident who was arrested over protests against Israel’s merciless aggression on the Gaza Strip.
Mohsen Mahdawi has walked out of immigration detention after a federal judge in Vermont ordered his release.
“The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,” said Geoffrey Crawford, a US district judge, at a hearing on Wednesday. “Mahdawi, I will order you released.”
In his ruling, Crawford stated that the evidence before the court “suggests that Mahdawi is neither a flight risk or a danger to the community, and his release will not interfere with his removal proceedings.”
Crawford ordered that Mahdawi be released from prison on bail, pending the resolution of his case in federal court.
The order allows Mahdawi to continue residing in Vermont and to travel to New York to attend school and meet with his lawyers. His case in federal court will continue alongside separate immigration proceedings.
Crawford wrote that the government “failed to demonstrate any legitimate interest in Mr. Mahdawi’s continued confinement” and that his “continued detention would likely have a chilling effect on protected speech.”
The Palestinian green-card holder had been detained and ordered deported by the Trump administration on April 14 during his naturalization interview.
Mahdawi had been taken into custody “in direct retaliation” for his role in campus demonstrations against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
As an outspoken critic of Israel’s war on Gaza, he did an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes program last December and shed light on the Israeli genocide in the Palestinian territory.
Born in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, Mahdawi moved to the US in 2014 and co-founded Columbia’s Palestinian Student Society.
Facing forcible deportation, Mahdawi joined several other students who are all being held for their involvement in pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the United States.
US President Donald Trump has begun following through on a threat to deport all non-citizen university activists with ties to the pro-Palestine protests, which rocked the US last spring, with students staging daily protests on college campuses across the country for weeks.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who personally signed off on his arrest, recently said that Washington had revoked at least 300 foreign students’ visas.
Trump officials have accused these students of being “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the US over their condemnation of Israel’s months-long genocidal war on Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
