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Mohsen K. Mahdawi arrived<\/span> at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester, Vermont, on Monday. A Palestinian student at Columbia University, he hoped that, after 10 years in the U.S., he would pass the test to become a naturalized citizen.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him and began the process to deport him to the occupied West Bank. Mahdawi, a leader of the campus protest movement against Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, became yet another green card holder arrested and facing removal.<\/p>\n \u201cMohsen Mahdawi was unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity,\u201d Mahdawi\u2019s attorney Luna Droubi said in a statement to The Intercept. \u201cHe came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Mahdawi\u2019s lawyers filed a\u00a0habeas corpus petition<\/a>\u00a0on Monday morning challenging the legality of his detention, alleging the government was violating his statutory and due process rights by punishing him for speech related to Palestine and Israel. The filing said it appears that Mahdawi was facing deportation under the obscure provision used in other recent cases<\/a> that gives Secretary of State Marco Rubio the right to unilaterally declare immigrants as threats to American foreign policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n A federal judge signed a\u00a0temporary restraining order<\/a>\u00a0on Monday to keep Mahdawi from being moved out of Vermont while his case is pending.<\/p>\n EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE: Columbia student and Palestinian Mohsen Madawi was just arrested during a visit to the immigration office here in Colchester, VT. More to follow. Footage by: Christopher Helali pic.twitter.com\/I9JvPS2DLn<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Christopher Helali (@ChrisHelali) April 14, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Mahdawi was one of the leaders of the pro-Palestine student protest movement until spring 2024, when he said he took a step back from the movement to focus on building bridges with Jewish and Israeli communities on campus.<\/p>\n In December 2023, Mahdawi asked Columbia professor Shai Davidai, a controversial<\/a> pro-Israel figure<\/a> at the school, to get coffee. The two met, but Mahdawi later said that Davidai left in the middle of the coffee. Less than two months after the meeting, Davidai posted a video<\/a> of Mahdawi to Twitter in a thread characterizing him and other protest organizers as antisemitic and pro-Hamas. (Davidai did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Since then, Mahdawi became a focus of attacks from a member of Congress<\/a> and Zionist groups like Canary Mission<\/a> and Betar.<\/p>\n With Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration, groups like Betar and Canary Mission have been at the center of a push to place scrutiny on foreign students<\/a> active in campus pro-Palestine movements. At Columbia, one behind-the-scenes push came from a WhatsApp group<\/a> that included alumni and faculty who organized to get the students deported. Davidai was a member of the group, though there\u2019s no indication he participated in talk of deportation, whether about Mahdawi or other students.<\/p>\n Even before his friend and fellow Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil<\/a> was arrested by immigration authorities, Mahdawi asked university administrators to help him find a safe place to live so he would not be taken by ICE agents, according to emails reviewed by The Intercept. The school did nothing in response, Mahdawi said.<\/p>\n After ICE abducted<\/a> Khalil last month, Mahdawi sheltered in place for more than three weeks for fear of being picked up himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead of taking him off the street, however, immigration authorities scheduled the citizenship test at the Colchester USCIS office and took Mahdawi into custody when he arrived.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now, Mahdawi is facing an order to deport him to the occupied West Bank, where escalating attacks from both the Israeli military and Jewish settlers have led to increased casualties among Palestinians.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a death sentence,\u201d Mahdawi said. \u201cBecause my people are being killed unjustly in an indiscriminate way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n His fears arise from the toll Israel\u2019s attacks and occupation have taken on Mahdawi\u2019s family. Growing up in the West Bank, his community has suffered losses for years. He said he lost his childhood best friend, his uncle, two cousins, several of whom were killed in the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against occupation that lasted from 2000 to 2005.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI will be either living or imprisoned or killed by the apartheid system.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n More recently, he lost two cousins in the growing violence in the occupied Palestinian territories since the October 7 attacks, Mahdawi said. His aunts and uncles\u2019 homes have been destroyed, and his father\u2019s store was blown up as part of the violence in the West Bank city of Jenin.<\/p>\n Now, he is the ninth<\/a> Columbia student targeted for deportation as hundreds across the country<\/a> have had their visas revoked <\/a>under the Trump administration\u2019s sweeps and abductions of immigrants. Mahdawi is one of the few cases of legal permanent residents arrested, meaning he did not have a student visa revoked but is facing an effort by the government to cancel his green card. Other permanent residents have faced deportation over allegations that they violated immigration law or had their residency revoked over pro-Palestinian views<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the outcome,\u201d Mahdawi said. \u201cI will be either living or imprisoned or killed by the apartheid system.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n