The detained Columbia University activist Mohsen Mahdawi was released from prison Wednesday morning after a federal judge's ruling in Burlington. He will be able to remain at home in Vermont and attend classes amid ongoing immigration proceedings.
“This is what justice is,” Mahdawi said after the ruling, speaking to a crowd of supporters outside the courthouse. “And for anybody who is doubting justice, this is a light of hope, a hope and faith in the justice system in America.”
The Trump administration detained Mahdawi, a green-card holder, at a citizenship appointment in Vermont earlier this month. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a letter that Mahdawi should be deported because his pro-Palestinian activism threatens foreign policy goals, including “to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States" — an allegation Mahdawi and his lawyers flatly refute.
Mahdawi's lawyers say his arrest was unconstitutional, in retaliation for Mahdawi's advocacy for Palestinian human rights.
In its arguments, a lawyer representing the government said that the court did not have authority to release Mahdawi. And it said even if it did, Mahdawi posed a threat to his community — referencing a 2015 Windsor Police Department report in which a local gun shop owner described Mahdawi as suspicious and alleged he made violent comments about Jewish people.
Mahdawi’s lawyers said the allegations were untrue and called them “cartoonishly racist hearsay.” They said an FBI agent had looked into the allegations and decided to close the case.
That satisfied U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford, who agreed that Mahdawi was not at risk of harming the community nor fleeing from court proceedings — a point he said was underscored by the more than 90 letters he received from Mahdawi’s supporters ahead of the hearing.
Some of those supporters were in the courtroom Wednesday, and quietly cried and held hands in the courtroom as Crawford read his decision. Crawford said Mahdawi can go back to his home in Vermont and continue attending classes at Columbia University, where he's supposed to graduate this spring.
Hearings in Mahdawi's immigration court case, which is separate, are scheduled to begin soon.
At the courthouse Wednesday, Mahdawi said he saw the fight for justice in America and that of the Palestinian people as intertwined.
“And I'm saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” he said.
The three members of Vermont's congressional delegation — Sen. Peter Welch, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Becca Balint — have opposed his arrest, and Welch visited Mahdawi in prison earlier in the month. In a statement, they said Wednesday's decision meant the constitutional right to due process has prevailed.
"Mohsen Mahdawi is here in the United States legally and acted legally. He should never have experienced this grave injustice,” Sanders, Welch, and Balint said in the statement. “The Trump Administration’s actions in this case—and in so many other cases of wrongfully detained, deported, and disappeared people — are shameful and immoral. This is an important first step. We will continue the fight against President Trump’s assault on the rule of law.”
