Columbia student was arrested during naturalization interview

A Palestinian Columbia university student, Mohsen Mahdawi, has been arrested under threat of deportation by the Trump administration. The arrest comes as the government cut billions in funding to Harvard University after it rejected his demands to limit academic freedom.

The process to deport Mr. Mahdawi to the West Bank has begun.

District Judge William Sessions ordered President Donald Trump and other senior officials not to remove Mohsen Mahdawi from the United States or take him out of the state of Vermont. The Trump administration has defied other court orders on immigration matters, however, as is the case with the refusal to seek the return of Salvadoran citizen Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States after he was ‘mistakenly’ deported and sent to CECOT, a maximum security terrorism confinement prison in El Salvador.

“The government has made clear that it intends to retaliate and punish individuals such as Mr. Mahdawi who advocated for ceasefire and ending the bloodshed in Gaza,” his lawyers said in a court filing.

“You can’t disappear people for exercising their First Amendment rights,” U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said in a video statement on Monday.

Members of the Vermont’s congressional delegation, including U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, called the detention “immoral, inhumane, and illegal,” and that as a legal U.S. resident, Mr. Mahdawi should be afforded due process.

“Mahdawi … walked into an immigration office for what was supposed to be the final step in his citizenship process. Instead, he was arrested and removed in handcuffs by plainclothes, armed individuals with their faces covered,” they said.