On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump said that he was going to take away visas from "antisemitic foreigners" on college campuses. But his first target, Mahmoud Khalil, is not a visa holder; he is a legal permanent resident and the husband of an American citizen, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents discovered as they were detaining Khalil.
Now, the Trump administration is trying to deport a Palestinian-American immigrant on the cusp of citizenship. Ten-year legal U.S. resident and Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi showed up at an immigration center in Vermont on Monday for what he thought was his naturalization appointment. Instead, ICE agents swooped in and "refused to provide any information as to where he was being taken or what would happen to him," according to a statement by Vermont lawmakers.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, referred Reason to the State Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Columbia students gathered with candles and Palestinian flags at the Sundial, a monument at the center of campus, on Monday night. The apparent leader of the demonstration declined to be interviewed but said she had already been planning to hold a vigil before Mahdawi's arrest. After a moment of silence, she recited an Islamic prayer for the dead and a poem by Palestinian-American poet Noor Hindi. A man in a suit walked by and muttered, "Isn't this not allowed anymore?"
Khalil and Mahdawi co-founded the Palestinian student union at Columbia, and Mahdawi was president of the Columbia University Buddhist Association for two years, according to the court filings. While Khalil is soft-spoken in public, Mahdawi comes off as the hothead of the duo. He has been frank about his struggles between feelings of vengeance and forgiveness.
"Radicalism is not Justice, and will not make Justice," he wrote on Instagram in November 2024. "Justice is balanced, Justice is compassionate, Justice is empathetic, and Justice is transformative."
In any case, Mahdawi hasn't been accused of any crime, according to a habeas corpus petition filed by his lawyers. Vermont District Court Judge William Sessions issued a temporary restraining order preventing ICE from removing Mahdawi from Vermont.
"Mohsen Mahdawi was unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity," Mahdawi's attorney, Luna Droubi, said in a statement to The Intercept. "He came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech."
The filing by Mahdawi's lawyers speculates that the Trump administration may want to deport him under Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the U.S. government to remove anyone whose presence poses "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences." Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited that law in Khalil's case, arguing that anti-Israel student protests pose such a threat.
Mahdawi himself told The Intercept that getting deported to the Palestinian territories would be "kind of a death sentence." The Israeli army raided Al Faraa Refugee Camp, where Mahdawi grew up, in February 2025. Mahdawi claimed on Instagram that the soldiers ransacked his childhood home, beating up his disabled brother and marching him through the streets with a blindfold on, then blew up his father's convenience store.
The Mahdawi family has been violently at odds with the Israeli government for years. His uncle, Capt. Thayer Mahdawi, was a Palestinian police officer killed during an Israeli raid in September 2001, according to a memorial article by Fatah, the political party that Thayer Mahdawi was associated with. The International Foundation for Solidarity with Prisoners, a Palestinian diaspora organization, states that Thayer Mahdawi was arrested while wounded but still alive, and died in Israeli custody.
Several months after his uncle's death, the younger Mahdawi witnessed a killing in person, he told 60 Minutes in December 2023: "I had my best friend with me, Hameida, and suddenly I see an Israeli soldier pointing the rifle at us, and he shot my friend in the chest. I was 10 years old, and I still remember when we put him in the grave. I held him, and I spoke to him, and I said, 'Hameida, wake up! Wake up!' He didn't wake up. I told him, 'I promise, I promise, I will revenge [sic].'"
Mahdawi's cousin, Maysara Masharqa, became a field commander in Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a Fatah-aligned rebel group that has killed Israeli civilians. Masharqa was killed by an Israeli drone strike on the West Bank in August 2024. Mahdawi posted an Instagram eulogy for Masharqa's "fierce resistance," which is no longer visible on his page, according to The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet.
Mahdawi himself took a very different path. He studied computer engineering at Birzeit University, the top university in the West Bank, completed a second undergraduate degree in philosophy at Columbia, and enrolled in a master's degree at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, set to begin in the fall. (Somewhere along the way, he got involved in Buddhism.) After 10 years of living in America, he had also applied for U.S. citizenship.
"I have faith in the people living in this country. The government is not the people," Mahdawi told The Intercept in an interview shortly before his naturalization appointment.
When someone shouted antisemitic threats at the November 2023 rally, Mahdawi led students in chasing out the heckler, the Columbia Daily Spectator reported at the time. "You don't represent us," Mahdawi shouted, thanking the "Jewish brothers and sisters who stand with us here today." His lawyers cited the Spectator article in their filing.
Over the past few months, Mahdawi reportedly stepped back from activism to try befriending Jewish and Israeli students. Before his detention, he had been meeting with Israelis for Peace NYC "about how to possibly work together to promote safety and equality for everyone on the land," the Israeli diaspora antiwar group wrote on X.
"This is a Palestinian. I'm an Israeli. Our people are at war," Israeli-American Columbia graduate Mikey Baratz told The New York Times. "And [Mahdawi's] willingness to actually hear and actively learn and understand the Israeli experience—I mean, I've never met anyone who so quickly was willing to take feedback."
But Mahdawi also had a inkling that this journey might be abruptly ended by the government. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services had asked him to come in for his naturalization interview a few months ahead of schedule. Mahdawi felt it was a trap, he told The Intercept. That feeling was right.
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