A Palestinian-born Columbia student who was arrested by ICE earlier this week at his US citizenship interview has spoken out from jail. 

Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, was arrested in Vermont after showing up to the interview.

Mahdawi came to the US as a refugee from the West Bank in 2014. He has been living in the country on a green card ever since. 

He was arrested as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on students who they say hamper the Middle East peace process by consistently protesting against Israel and in favor of Palestine. 

His lawyers, speaking on his behalf this week, said he was ‘relieved’ not to have been deported yet. 

They told The Associated Press that he ‘believes in peace and unity’, and that his arrest should ‘outrage us all.’ 

Mahdawi insists he is being unfairly targeted. 

Columbia University graduate Mohsen Mahdawi, who organized pro-Palestine protests, has broken his silence from ICE jail after agents arrested him at his US citizenship interview

Columbia University graduate Mohsen Mahdawi, who organized pro-Palestine protests, has broken his silence from ICE jail after agents arrested him at his US citizenship interview

Mahdawi made two peace signs with his hands as officers walked him away from the USCIS Burlington Field Office into a police cruiser on Monday. He is now in an ICE facility

Mahdawi made two peace signs with his hands as officers walked him away from the USCIS Burlington Field Office into a police cruiser on Monday. He is now in an ICE facility 

Demonstrators marched in New York City on Tuesday to protest Madhawi's arrest

Demonstrators marched in New York City on Tuesday to protest Madhawi’s arrest 

In a statement before his arrest, he told CBS News that none of his protests were intended to stoke division. 

‘I want people to know that the work and the activism that we have done was centered in the energy of love,’ he said. 

‘I want people to know that my compassion extended beyond the Palestinian people. My compassion is also for the Jewish people and for the Israelis as well.’ 

ICE agents arrested the Palestinian student at the USCIS Burlington Field Office building in Vermont on Monday, where he had been applying for US citizenship. 

Video shows the moment Mahdawi made two peace signs with his hands as agents escorted him out of the building into a police cruiser.  

He has filed a habeas corpus petition against the deportation attempt, which says he is a ‘lawful permanent resident of the US’ who has held a green card for 10 years. 

Mahdawi grew up in a West Bank refugee camp, and his attorneys have said that if he is deported he will face ‘harassment, detention and torture’ in his home country. 

The legal document also accuses the government of violating his First Amendment rights via the ‘retaliatory and targeted detention’ and attempt to remove him from the country. 

At Columbia University, where he is due to graduate next month, he was an ‘outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza’, his petition says. 

In 2023, he co-founded the university’s Palestinian Student Union, which ‘serves to engage with and celebrate Palestinian culture, history, and identity’, along with fellow student Mahmoud Khalil, who was recently deported after a tense court battle.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University graduate who organized pro-Palestine protests, has been detained by ICE agents during his US citizenship interview

Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University graduate who organized pro-Palestine protests, has been detained by ICE agents during his US citizenship interview

ICE agents arrested the Palestinian student at the USCIS Burlington Field Office building in Vermont on Monday, where he had been applying for US citizenship

ICE agents arrested the Palestinian student at the USCIS Burlington Field Office building in Vermont on Monday, where he had been applying for US citizenship

The duo organized several protests, but Mahdawi stepped back from the demonstrations in March 2024, according to his petition.  

In December 2023, Mahdawi spoke with CBS show 60 Minutes. He told interviewers that ‘as a child, he watched an Israeli soldier shoot and kill his best friend in the West Bank,’ his petition said.

‘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,’ his attorneys wrote. 

During his 60 Minutes interview, he said he ‘could not believe what he was seeing’ when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and that he was worried about the ‘huge level of revenge’ Israel would wreak on his home country. 

Mahdawi also condemned anti-Semitic remarks made by one person at the protests on the Columbia University campus who shouted ‘death to Jews’. 

‘I was shocked,’ Mahdawi said. ‘I walked directly to the person and told him, you don’t represent us, because this is not something that we agree with’. 

‘To be anti-Semitic is unjust and the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against anti-Semitism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’ he added. 

In 2023, Mahdawi co-founded the university's Palestinian Student Union, which 'serves to engage with and celebrate Palestinian culture, history, and identity', along with fellow student Mahmoud Khalil (pictured), who was recently deported after a tense court battle

In 2023, Mahdawi co-founded the university’s Palestinian Student Union, which ‘serves to engage with and celebrate Palestinian culture, history, and identity’, along with fellow student Mahmoud Khalil (pictured), who was recently deported after a tense court battle 

Mahdawi grew up in a West Bank refugee camp, and his attorneys have said that if he is deported he will face 'harassment, detention and torture' in his home country

Mahdawi grew up in a West Bank refugee camp, and his attorneys have said that if he is deported he will face ‘harassment, detention and torture’ in his home country

According to his habeas corpus petition, Mahdawi was born and raised in a refugee camp in Palestine’s West Bank, where he lived until he moved to the US in 2014.

Mahdawi has completed his undergraduate degree at Columbia University and is due to graduate in May 2025. 

He plans to return to the university this fall to complete a master’s in International Affairs at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. 

His petition says the Department of Homeland Security, led by Marco Rubio, is using the same provision to deport Mahdawi as was used against Khalil. 

A judge recently ruled that Khalil, 30, who was born in a Syrian refugee camp to Palestinian parents, could be deported 

Rubio said Khalil should be removed because his presence in the US has ‘potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,’ citing a 1952 law called the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Mahdawi’s fate now hangs in a similar balance. 

His lawsuit says that he transferred to Columbia after studying computer science for two years at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. 

The document says that he was also the president of the Columbia University Buddhist Association for two years, adding that he ‘believes in non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion’. 

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