(COLCHESTER, Vt.) — Attorneys for Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested two weeks ago by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents following his citizenship interview, are expected to argue in a hearing Wednesday that he should be released while his deportation case proceeds.
Mahdawi, who co-founded a university organization called the Palestinian Student Union with detained Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank before moving in 2014 to the U.S., where he has been a legal resident for the last 10 years.
“We are going to make our best demand that he needs to walk out tomorrow and be able to continue on his path to higher education and continuing his life,” one of his lawyers said Tuesday.
Mahdawi, who is expected to graduate from Columbia next month, was arrested at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Vermont, where he was taking his last step in the process to become a U.S. citizen.
His lawyers believe that, like Khalil, he is being targeted by the Trump administration under Immigration and Nationality Act section 237(a)(4)(C)(i), which assert that the secretary of state can deem a person deportable if they have reasonable ground to believe that the person’s presence or activities in the U.S. could have adverse foreign policy consequences.
At Columbia, Mahdawi was an “outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and an activist and organizer in student protests on Columbia’s campus until March of 2024, after which he took a step back and has not been involved in organizing,” according to a habeas petition obtained by ABC News.
“He’s being detained based solely on his first amendment rights — his speech,” Luni Droubi, one of Mahdawi’s attorneys, previously told ABC News. “That’s a violation of the law, that’s a violation of the Constitution, and he should be released immediately as a result of the detention.”
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