Judge blocks deportation of Columbia grad student, Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi

An immigration judge has blocked the Trump administration from deporting Columbia University graduate student Mohsen Mahdawi, a pro-Palestinian activist detained last year at his U.S. citizenship test, his attorneys wrote in court documents filed Tuesday.

Mahdawi, a lawful permanent resident, was arrested last April after his naturalization interview in Vermont and held in detention for more than two weeks. He was released on bail after filing a habeas petition in federal court that accused the government of retaliating against him for constitutionally protected speech against Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

“Nearly a year ago, I was detained at my citizenship interview, not for breaking the law but for speaking against the genocide of Palestinians,” Mahdawi said in a statement. “In a climate where dissent is increasingly met with intimidation and detention, today’s ruling renews hope that due process still applies and that no agency stands above the Constitution.”

In a letter filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Mahdawi’s lawyers said Immigration Judge Nina Froes terminated removal proceedings last week because the Trump administration did not authenticate a memo from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that claimed Mahdawi was a threat to U.S. foreign policy, which Mahdawi has denied. The appeals court is reviewing his case alongside that of Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who the Trump administration also tried to deport.

The Trump administration could still appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals or try to refile a new case based on the same allegations.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately say if the administration plans to do either, though directed the Daily News to 2015 allegations by a Vermont gun shop owner that Mahdawi had threatened violence against Jews. Mahdawi and his lawyers have vehemently denied the claims, and there were no charges filed or action taken against him.

In a statement, DHS said it is a privilege to be granted a green card to live in the United States that can be revoked.

“No activist judge, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that,” read the statement. Immigration judges are employees of the U.S. Justice Department within the executive branch.

Mahdawi, 35, was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank. He co-founded Columbia’s Palestinian Student Union with Mahmoud Khalil, another green card holder who was detained by the Trump administration for his activism, though Mahdawi’s participation in the Columbia protests ended before the pro-Palestinian college encampments of spring 2024, according to court documents.

In interviews last year with The News, friends of Mahdawi said he was taking a class on peacemaking and negotiations, and working on a 65-page framework for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he was arrested.

Mahdawi had come to see his naturalization interview as a “trap,” writing in The New York Times that the federal government “dangled the prospect of becoming an American citizen, only for masked agents to apprehend me.”

He graduated from Columbia last spring with an undergraduate degree in philosophy, before returning to campus this school year for a master’s degree in international and public affairs.

“We’re pleased that the court has terminated this witch hunt of a case,” said Cyrus Mehta, Mahdawi’s immigration lawyer. “The government’s inability to even file the proper paperwork demonstrates how careless and reckless they are being in their policy of detaining innocent people for their speech.”