{"id":165888,"date":"2026-03-17T03:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T03:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/165888\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T03:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T03:58:19","slug":"trump-admin-restarts-deportation-process-against-columbia-student-mohsen-mahdawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/165888\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump admin restarts deportation process against Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration has restarted efforts to deport Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi<\/a> after an immigration judge tossed the case against him, his attorneys said in a court filing Monday.<\/p>\n

Mahdawi, a lawful permanent resident, was arrested last April at his U.S. citizenship test<\/a> and held in ICE custody for more than two weeks. He asked a federal judge to order his release, alleging the government had violated his constitutional free-speech rights. He was let go later that spring<\/a> as the deportation process continued.<\/p>\n

The immigration judge eventually terminated removal proceedings<\/a> because the administration did not authenticate a memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that claimed Mahdawi was a threat to U.S. foreign policy, which Mahdawi has denied.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Feb. 25 asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to reconsider the immigration judge\u2019s decision, according to the filing in U.S. Court of Appeals 2nd Circuit,\u00a0which is also reviewing a parallel constitutional case. DHS did not immediately comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis appeal amounts to them grasping at straws,\u201d said Cyrus Mehta, Mahdawi\u2019s immigration lawyer. \u201cWe look forward to the day that Mohsen can focus his attention where it belongs: on his studies, on his advocacy for peace, and on seeking justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MohsenMohsen Mahdawi speaks outside the courthouse after a judge released the Palestinian student activist, on April 30, 2025 in Burlington, Vt. (Amanda Swinhart\/AP)<\/p>\n

The appeal comes weeks after Mayor Mamdani asked President Trump to permanently drop the case against Mahdawi<\/a> during an unrelated meeting in Washington, D.C.. Mamdani also urged Trump to release Ellie Aghayeva, another Columbia student with no known involvement in the protests, which the president did later that day, and Leqaa Kordia<\/a>, an adult woman who joined Columbia protests but was not a student, who was released Monday.<\/p>\n

City Hall did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Mahdawi\u2019s attorneys have also filed a \u201ccross-appeal,\u201d asking the Board of Immigration Appeals to terminate the case once and for all, and block the federal government from refiling the case.<\/p>\n

Mahdawi, 35, was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank. At Columbia, he co-founded a Palestinian Student Union with Mahmoud Khalil, another target of Trump\u2019s crackdown on international student protesters<\/a>, though Mahdawi\u2019s participation in campus activism largely ended before the spring 2024 Columbia encampment, according to court documents.<\/p>\n

In interviews, Mahdawi\u2019s friends have said he was taking a class on peacemaking and negotiations, and working on a 65-page framework for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the time of his ICE arrest.<\/p>\n

\"MohsenMohsen Mahdawi speaks during an interview at the ACLU of Vermont on May 8, 2025 in Montpelier, Vt. (Alex Driehaus\/AP)<\/p>\n

Mahdawi has since come to see his U.S. naturalization interview as a \u201ctrap,\u201d alleging in The New York Times that the federal government \u201cdangled the prospect of becoming an American citizen, only for masked agents to apprehend me<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

He graduated from Columbia last spring with an undergraduate degree in philosophy, before returning to campus this school year<\/a> for a master\u2019s degree in international and public affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo human being should fear losing their liberty for exercising their First Amendment rights,\u201d Mahdawi said Monday.<\/p>\n

With Josephine Stratman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration has restarted efforts to deport Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,67,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-165888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}