UPDATE (Wednesday, April 30): Mohsen Mahdawi released from prison while immigration proceedings continue
The Trump administration is arguing that 34-year-old Upper Valley resident Mohsen Mahdawi is a threat to the community and should stay behind bars, according to documents filed Monday ahead of his Wednesday release hearing.
In the filings, the feds acknowledge that Mahdawi — who is being held at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans — has not been convicted of a crime. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio alleged in a letter that Mahdawi’s activism at Columbia University threatens U.S. foreign policy goals, including “to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States” — an allegation Mahdawi and his lawyers flatly refute.
The federal government argued that the federal court in Vermont does not have the authority to grant Mahdawi’s release. And they said even if it did, Mahdawi’s “history and characteristics” show he should not be released.
The government cited two reports filed in Vermont years ago — including a police report from the Windsor Police Department in 2015 in which a local gun shop owner described Mahdawi as suspicious and alleged he made violent comments about Jewish people, as well as a report from a 2019 border crossing that said Mahdawi was caught with illegally possessed drugs on his way back from Canada.
In a response filed Tuesday, Mahdawi’s lawyers said both incidents were “unsubstantiated allegations that have long been dismissed.”
In particular, Mahdawi wrote under penalty of perjury that he never said the statements attributed to him by the gun shop owner in 2015, and said he believes the allegations may have been motivated by racial stereotypes. He said he met with the Windsor Police Department and the FBI afterwards, and that the FBI agent similarly suspected the report was motivated by racial bias and notified Mahdawi that the investigation had “cleared” him a few months later. (Judge Geoffrey Crawford has requested that the FBI agent provide testimony about that investigation at the hearing Wednesday morning.)
Regarding the 2019 border incident, Mahdawi said he had only prescription medication and vitamins in the car, and that he believes subsequent testing confirmed this. He said he accepted court diversion in that case even though he did nothing wrong, and that the matter was later expunged.
Mahdawi’s lawyers, meanwhile, continue to argue that Mahdawi was arrested on the basis of his “lawful speech in support of Palestinian human rights,” and that the government is attempting to obfuscate by raising the other incidents.
“He is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community, quite the contrary,” Mahdawi’s lawyers wrote in a court filing Tuesday. “He hopes only to continue with his educational pursuits and become a United States citizen.”
Mahdawi is from the occupied West Bank and is a lawful permanent resident of the United States. He moved to Vermont in 2014 and lives in White River Junction, and is a student at Columbia University, where he helped found the Palestinian Student Union and participated in on-campus protests and walkouts. He took a step back from that activism last year, his friends say, in part because he was afraid about how it would impact his citizenship process.
Mahdawi’s fears proved prescient. Two weeks ago, Mahdawi was called into an immigration office in Colchester for a citizenship interview, only to be arrested by officers, put into an unmarked car and driven away.
Last week, a judge ordered officials to keep Mahdawi in Vermont for up to 90 days (his Columbia peer Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk are both being held in Louisiana).
More from Vermont Public: Mohsen Mahdawi will stay in Vermont as judge considers case
Judge Crawford will consider the government’s case and Mahdawi’s arguments at a hearing Wednesday morning in Burlington.
Lexi Krupp contributed reporting.
