After spending two weeks in detention, Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi is finally out — and he’s not slowing down one bit.
Fresh out of the courthouse in Burlington, Vermont, wearing a keffiyeh to show love for his home, Palestine, Mohsen jumped right back into action.
“We have to organize, we have to push for peace and compassion, and we have to move away from war and hate,” he told a cheering crowd on Wednesday.
Mohsen’s case has been making headlines because he’s one of the first international student activists to get released from immigration detention under a court order — after what many are calling an unfair move by the Trump administration.
His lawyers say he was targeted because he’s been speaking up for Palestinian human rights at Columbia, where he’s working on his graduate degree.
Here’s what happened: back in April, Mohsen went to his naturalization appointment, passed the test, took the oath to officially become a U.S. citizen — and then, right after that, Homeland Security agents swooped in and arrested him.
“They basically planned my kidnapping,” Mohsen said outside the courthouse.
Homeland Security handed him a notice saying his activism could hurt U.S. foreign relations, and that was enough to try and kick him out.
At one point, they almost flew him to an ICE facility in Louisiana.
“We missed the plane by just nine minutes,” Mohsen said, crediting his legal team for acting fast to keep him in Vermont.
Now he’s out on bond, but with conditions: he has to live in Vermont, he’s allowed to go to New York for school or meetings with his lawyers, and he has to show up at all court dates.
There’s more: the government tried to bring up an old story from 2015 where a gun shop owner claimed Mohsen was looking for weapons and said some bad stuff about Jewish people. But the FBI checked it out, found no evidence, and closed the case.
Despite everything, Mohsen’s friends are standing strong with him.
Michael Baratz, a fellow Columbia grad and Israeli citizen, said he and Mohsen have been working together on a peace project to build bridges between Palestinians and Israelis.
“In the U.S., we don’t lock people up for political speech,” Michael said. “It’s wrong and illegal to threaten someone’s immigration status just because you don’t like what they say.”
Mohsen has been a major voice against the violence in Gaza, leading campus protests and co-founding the Palestinian Student Union at Columbia.
He knows the road ahead won’t be easy.
“You might think I’m free,” he said Wednesday, “but my freedom is tied to the freedom of so many others.”
