Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia University student who was detained for his activism, walked out of immigration detention on Wednesday after a federal judge in Vermont ordered his release.
Mahdawi had been detained and ordered deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.
“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, according to ABC News. “Mr Mahdawi, I will order you released.”
Mahdawi was arrested by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview.
Related: ‘National disgrace’: US lawmakers decry student detentions on visit to Ice jails
He is one of a number of international students who have been detained in recent months for their advocacy on behalf of Palestinians. The Trump administration is attempting to deport them using an obscure statute that gives the secretary of state the right to revoke the legal status of people in the country deemed a threat to foreign policy.
In his ruling, Crawford stated that the evidence before the court “suggests that Mr Mahdawi is neither a flight risk or a danger to the community, and his release will not interfere with his removal 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”.
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.
Upon his release, Mahdawi , greeted supporters and thanked them for their support.
“For anybody who is doubting justice, this is a light of hope and faith in the justice system in America,” he said in a brief address. “We are witnessing the fight for justice in America, which means a true democracy, and the fight for justice for Palestinians, which means that both liberation[s] are interconnected, because no one of us is free unless we all are.”
Shezza Abboushi Dallal, one of Mahdawi’s attorneys said outside the courtroom on Wednesday that “today’s victory cannot be overstated”.
“The court’s order to free Mohsen today is a victory for Mohsen, in his just pursuit of continued advocacy for Palestinian lives, and it is a victory for all people in this country invested in their ability to dissent and speak and protest for causes they are morally drawn to,” Abboushi Dallal said. “We will continue our legal battle for Mohsen until his constitutional rights are fully vindicated.”
Attorneys for Mahdawi, a lawful permanent US resident, argued that he was being unlawfully detained in “retaliation for his speech advocating for Palestinian human rights” and say that it was “part of a policy intended to silence and chill the speech of those who advocate for Palestinian human rights”.
The Trump administration is seeking to deport 34-year-old Mahdawi, claiming that his presence and activities in the US “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest”. Critics say that the crackdown that swept up Mahdawi constitutes an unprecedented assault on free speech.
In new court filings submitted on Monday, the justice department included a two-page letter from Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, saying that Mahdawi’s activities and presence in the US “undermines US policy to combat antisemitism” according to NPR, and that his activities could “potentially undermine the peace process underway in the Middle East”.
In a statement following Mahdawi’s release, the Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin declared: “No judge, not this one or another, is going to stop the Trump administration from restoring the rule of law to our immigration system.”
This week, the Vermont senate voted to condemn “the manner and circumstances” of Mahdawi’s arrest, and called for his immediate release.
Several Democratic members of Congress – joined by Senator Bernie Sanders – rallied outside of the state department this week on his behalf.
“He has used his voice to advocate for peace, justice and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis” Sanders said. “Not only was this action cruel and inhumane, most importantly, it was illegal, it was unconstitutional.”
David Myers, a Jewish history professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue efforts with Mahdawi, said he was overjoyed at the release of his friend. He called Mahdawi’s detention “a profound miscarriage of justice”.
“Mohsen was such a clearcut case, given his extraordinary commitments to non-violence, dialogue across difference, and acknowledging the humanity of all,” he said in an email. “If it is a crime to embody such values, then the edifice of democracy in the United States has completely crumbled.”
Mahdawi immigrated to the US over a decade ago and began attending Columbia University in 2021. According to his attorneys, last year, as a student at Columbia, he 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”.
Mahdawi, who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, spoke with NPR this week from the Northwest State correctional facility in St Albans, Vermont.
“I’m centered, internally I am at peace,” Mahdawi told NPR. “While I still know deeply that this is a level of injustice that I am facing, I have faith. I have faith that justice will prevail.”
Also this week, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that a lawsuit filed by the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who is also challenging his detention and deportation order, can proceed.
The Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk and Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri also remain detained and continue to fight against their deportation, which the Trump administration is pursuing on the same foreign policy grounds.
Noa Yachot contributed reporting
