A Columbia University student who co-founded the Palestinian Student Union alongside Mahmoud Khalil was arrested on Monday by Department of Homeland Security officials, according to his counsel.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a permanent resident of the United States, was arrested and held after attending his naturalization interview in Vermont.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions then gave Mahdawi’s attorneys a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the government from transferring Mahdawi out of the District of Vermont “pending further order” from the court.
Mahdawi was a “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.
Mahdawi’s lawyers called his arrest “unlawful” and claimed it violated the First Amendment.
“Mr. Mahdawi’s unlawful arrest and detention comes after Respondents adopted a policy … to retaliate and punish noncitizens for their speech and expressive conduct related to Palestine and Israel,” added the attorneys.
A representative for Immigration and Customs Enforcement directed ABC News to the State Department, which did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
According to his habeas petition, Mahdawi was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank before moving to the United States in 2014. He has been a legal resident for the past decade and is scheduled to graduate from Columbia next month.
In December 2023, Mahdawi went on the TV news show “60 Minutes,” where he stated that “as a child, he watched an Israeli soldier shoot and kill his best friend in the West Bank,” according to the petition.
“Mr. Mahdawi is fearful that, if he loses his lawful permanent resident status and he is removed to the West Bank, he will experience the same harassment, detention, and torture that his family has experienced, and would be in even more danger in light of the campaigns that have targeted and spread lies about him,” the lawyers for him claimed.
Mahdawi’s 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 states that the secretary of state has the authority to declare a person deportable if there is reasonable cause to believe that the person’s presence or activities in the United States could have negative foreign policy consequences.
In a court filing in Khalil’s immigration case, DHS presented a two-page statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio arguing that the law grants him the authority to evaluate whether a person is deportable even if their activities are “otherwise lawful.”
Rubio stated that Khalil should be deported due to his alleged involvement in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”
An immigration judge concluded on Friday that Khalil can be deported on these grounds.
Khalil, a green card holder and permanent legal resident who is married to an American citizen, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at his Columbia apartment in March after leading protests against the war in Gaza. He engaged in negotiations with school administration, requesting that the institution break relations with Israel and withdraw from Israeli corporations.
Khalil completed his graduate studies at Columbia in December and is scheduled to graduate in the spring.