Palestinian Columbia student detained by ICE at citizenship interview

Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi walked into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Colchester, Vermont, on Monday morning for a naturalization interview – a key step on the path to U.S. citizenship.

Instead, Mahdawi – who has been a green-card holder for 10 years – was arrested by ICE officials.

According to court documents and video posted online of his arrest, he was scheduled to appear at an ICE field center for the interview at about 11 a.m. Eastern time. Roughly an hour later, he was handcuffed and escorted by ICE officials toward a motorcade of vehicles, to be detained at an undisclosed location.

Mahdawi, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp, was a prominent activist in the protests at Columbia over Israel’s war in Gaza. His lawyers said his detention was in retaliation for his advocacy.

“He was clearly eligible for naturalization. He met all the requirements for citizenship, and he had applied for it last year, and he was scheduled for an interview, and he should have been naturalized,” Cyrus Mehta, one of the attorneys representing Mahdawi, told the Washington Post. “There’s no need to detain a lawful permanent resident incommunicado.”

Lawyers representing Mahdawi immediately filed a writ of habeas corpus and a petition for a temporary restraining order, noting “the government’s retaliatory and targeted detention and attempted removal of Mr. Mahdawi for his constitutionally protected speech.”

A district judge in Vermont on Monday temporarily ordered that Mahdawi not be deported from the United States or moved out of the state.

A spokesperson for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the reason for Mahdawi’s arrest or where he is being held.

After Mahdawi was detained Monday, legal experts said the arrest of a lawful permanent resident who has not been charged with a crime, at a naturalization interview, is highly unusual.

“The arrest sends a chilling message – no one is safe, and non-U.S. citizens must be silenced,” said Elora Mukherjee, a professor and the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.

“The First Amendment is supposed to protect all people on U.S. soil, regardless of immigration status. But the executive branch is pushing its authority well beyond the system of checks and balances set up by the U.S. Constitution, testing the rule of law, risking our constitutional democracy and pushing our nation toward authoritarianism,” Mukherjee said.

In a joint statement, Vermont Sens. Bernie Sanders (I) and Peter Welch (D) and Rep. Becca Balint (D) called the circumstances of Mahdawi’s arrest “immoral, inhumane and illegal,” and demanded his immediate release.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on alleged antisemitism on college campuses is increasingly targeting international students who have been critical of Israel or participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Students and instructors say President Donald Trump is trying to outlaw criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza and bend universities to his will, the Post has reported.

The administration in March detained Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder and a Palestinian student activist at Columbia. An immigration judge in Louisiana this month ruled that Khalil is eligible for deportation, setting an April 23 deadline for Khalil’s legal team to apply for a waiver. A separate legal challenge against his detention continues in New Jersey.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a memo that the presence in the U.S. of Khalil and another student, whose name was redacted, would “undermine U.S. policy to combat antisemitism around the world and in the United States” – accusations vigorously rejected by Khalil’s legal team.

Some pro-Palestinian students have been targeted by right-wing Zionist groups that are seeking their detention and deportation. One of those groups, Betar US, told the Post in March that Mahdawi was on a shortlist of three people that it was encouraging the Trump administration to deport under its executive order on antisemitism.

The group said at the time that it had provided unnamed administration contacts with dossiers on the activism and immigration status of Mahdawi, Cornell student Momodou Taal and another academic. Taal’s visa was revoked weeks later, and he left the U.S., saying on social media on March 31 that he had “lost faith that I could walk the streets without being abducted.”

The Department of Homeland Security denied that ICE was working with Betar.

According to court documents filed by Mahdawi’s lawyers, he is expected to graduate in May and has been admitted to a master’s program at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in the fall.

His upbringing at a refugee camp compelled him to advocate for Palestinian human rights, the documents say. They add that he is a Buddhist who believes in nonviolence and, during the campus protests, advocated for a peaceful political solution to the conflict in the Middle East.

During an interview on “60 Minutes” in December 2023, Mahdawi described watching an Israeli soldier kill his best friend at the age of 10 while living in the occupied West Bank – and how his views on the conflict have evolved.

“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,” he said in the interview.