Mohsen Mahdawi

Mohsen Mahdawi is a Palestinian activist and student at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. As a student in Columbia’s School of General Studies, he led pro-Palestinian campus protests at Columbia in 2023. In 2024, he initiated a reconciliation outreach program with critics of the pro-Palestinian movement, working with Jewish groups in the process.

Though he has been accused of no crime, Mahdawi was among a number of student activists targeted by the Trump administration for deportation. In March 2025, the US State Department, citing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, claimed Mahdawi "would have a potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest." In April, 2025, he was arrested and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office in Colchester, Vermont, where he had been informed he had an interview to obtain U.S. citizenship. He was released from detention and granted a temporary restraining order to prevent federal authorities from transferring him out of Vermont. In May 2025, he attended his graduation from Columbia's School of General Studies.

Biography

Early life Mohsen Mahdawi is a third-generation Palestinian refugee from the Far'a refugee camp, where he lived until 2014. Mahdawi said that, in his childhood in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, he saw his best friend—then 12 years old—shot and killed by an Israeli soldier. He also said an Israeli soldier shot him in the leg when he was 15.

In 2014, Mahdawi moved to the United States, and in 2015 he became a legal permanent resident with a green card. Two weeks after US District Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ordered his release from ICE detention, Mahdawi attended his graduation in May 2025. He was accepted into a master's program at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs Mohsen Mahdawi at his graduation from Columbia University's School of General Studies after federal judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ordered his release from ICE detention in 2025. In April, 2025, he was arrested and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office in Colchester, Vermont, where he had been informed he had an interview to obtain U.S. citizenship. In August 2024, he engaged in a discussion with Buddhist monk Bhikkhu Bodhi,

Pro-Palestinian advocacy and protests during the Gaza war Following the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, Mahdawi led and helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. There were pro-Israel counter-protesters, whom Mahdawi addressed: "Even though you're on the other side, we beg you, we cry, we ask you to see the humanity in us, to join us in our fight for freedom, for justice, for humanity." including Mahdawi, who denounced the individual directly. The suspension came after senior administrators revised policies cited in the suspension on October 24, adding a new section to the University Event Policy webpage that declared the administration's right to "regulate the time, place and manner of certain forms of public expression" without input from the University Senate. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later cited the phrase "threatening rhetoric and intimidation" verbatim, apparently drawing from the statement that Columbia never retracted, in an April 2025 memo drawn up to support his case against Mahdawi.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest

Mahdawi also helped organize and launch Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a coalition of over 80 student groups (later amassing over 120 student groups) formed after Columbia's administration quietly changed the university's event policy before banning Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. CUAD was launched on November 14, four days after the administration banned SJP and JVP. He invited several of his critics, including assistant professor Shai Davidai, to speak with him, and remained in contact with David Myers, a former leader of the progressive New Israel Fund and a professor of Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles. He repeatedly denounced antisemitism in speeches and interviews, and connected his opposition to antisemitism with his support for the Palestinian cause, saying that "the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Mahdawi's legal team immediately filed a habeas corpus petition against Donald Trump and his administration, describing his detention as unlawful.

On April 30, 2025, federal judge Geoffrey W. Crawford in Vermont ordered the release of Mahdawi, stating that "the two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime."

In July, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with the judges—two of whom were appointed by Donald Trump and one by George W. Bush—decided that Mahdawi's case should have been resolved in the immigration court system of the US Department of Justice, ordering the ruling for Mahdawi's release to be overturned. The July ruling of the Second Circuit ruling does not order his immediate re-arrest and the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Mahdawi, said there is no legal basis for his deportation or re-detention during the continuing appeals process.