The court’s order for the release of the detained student protest leader, said one lawyer, “is a victory for all people in this country invested in their ability to dissent and speak and protest.”
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student targeted for deportation by the Trump administration because he participated in anti-genocide protests at Columbia University, was released on bail Wednesday following an order from Vermont-based U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford.
Politico reported that upon his release, Mahdawi shared a message for President Donald Trump outside the courthouse.
“I am saying it clear and loud,” Mahdawi declared. “To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you.”
When Mahdawi, a green-card holder, arrived at a Colchester, Vermont immigration office to complete the process of becoming a U.S. citizen earlier this month, he was arrested by masked, hooded federal agents and put in an unmarked vehicle.
Mahdawi has been held at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans since U.S. District Judge William Sessions III blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to send him to a detention facility in Louisiana, like other student organizers.
His legal team—including attorneys with the ACLU and Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR)—is arguing in court that Mahdawi’s detention violates his constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.
“Nobody should fear detention for exercising their rights under the First Amendment. We are delighted that the court recognized that Mohsen is not a flight risk and that he should be released while his case proceeds,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, in a Wednesday statement.
CLEAR staff attorney Shezza Abboushi Dallal also welcomed the development: “The court’s order to free Mohsen today is a victory for Mohsen, in his just pursuit of continued advocacy for Palestinian lives, and it is a victory for all people in this country invested in their ability to dissent and speak and protest for causes they are morally drawn to. We will continue our legal battle for Mohsen until his constitutional rights are fully vindicated.”
Vermont’s congressional delegation—Rep. Becca Balint (D) and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I) and Peter Welch (D.)—said in a joint statement Wednesday that “we are relieved that Mohsen Mahdawi was released on bail… and that 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,” they added. “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.”
The trio has been advocating for Mahdawi since his arrest. Welch visited him in detention last week and Sanders was among several lawmakers who spoke at a Tuesday rally organized by Balint outside the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C.
“Mohsen Mahdawi is a cherished member of our community in Vermont, and I want to do everything that I can to elevate his story, because it is an indication of just how far from our values we have strayed,” Balint said.
“This administration needs to know that we are watching very carefully what they are doing, that we care about our rights,” she stressed, addressing the importance of taking to the streets to protest Trump’s actions. “It is about standing up for all of our rights, but it’s also about giving Mohsen Mahdawi and other people like him the understanding that we are standing with him.”
Highlighting some other cases that have made headlines during Trump’s first 100 days, Balint said that “people right now, in our country, are being disappeared by this administration. Children with cancer are being shipped off illegally—babies. Students are being harassed, and detained, and intimidated, and threatened. Why? Because they exercised free speech rights and the right to assemble. These are the rights that are basic to who we are—or who we say we are—as Americans.”
Mahdawi grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, which remains illegally occupied by Israel. Sanders noted Tuesday that “he has used his voice to advocate for peace, justice, and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis.”
Speaking out against Mahdawi’s arrest, the senator said that “not only was this action cruel and inhumane, most importantly, it was illegal, it was unconstitutional.”
“This is not just about Mohsen Mahdawi. It is about you and you and you,” he continued, pointing to members of the crowd. “If you can pick up a legal resident off the streets, throw them into a car, and put them in jail without any due process, that could happen to you.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)—who recently traveled to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia—and Reps. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) also delivered remarks on Tuesday, as did leaders from Demand Progress and Indivisible.
Many of them pointed to others swept up in the Trump administration’s effort to crush critics and carry out mass deportations, including Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to a megaprison in his native El Salvador alongside hundreds of Venezuelan migrants; former Columbia organizer Mahmoud Khalil; Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University; and Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk.
A federal district court judge had ordered the Trump administration to transfer Öztürk, a Turkish national, from Louisiana to Vermont by Thursday for a hearing on her petition challenging her detention. However, the government appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit on Tuesday halted the directive. Arguments for the appeal are now scheduled for next week.
Öztürk’s legal team, which also includes the ACLU and CLEAR, said in response to Tuesday’s decision that “Rümeysa Öztürk never should have been arrested and detained, period. We are ready to argue her case before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, and we won’t stop fighting until she is free.”
Also on Tuesday, a U.S. district judge in New Jersey rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to shut down Khalil’s lawsuit arguing that the government is unlawfully detaining him for his political views. Like Öztürk and Mahdawi, his legal team includes the ACLU and CLEAR.
File. Mohsen Mahdawi, Palestinian advocate for peace, November 2024. Author: HopsonRoad. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.. H/t Wikimedia Commons.
“The court has affirmed that the federal government does not have the unreviewable authority to trample on our fundamental freedoms,” Noor Zafar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said Tuesday. “This is a huge step forward for Mahmoud and for the other students and scholars that the Trump administration has unlawfully detained in retaliation for their political speech, and a rebuke of attempts by the executive to use immigration laws to weaken First Amendment protections for political gain.”
Khalil recently missed the birth of his child, due to his detention. His wife, Noor Abdalla, said Tuesday that “as I am now caring for our barely week-old son, it is even more urgent that we continue to speak out for Mahmoud’s freedom, and for the freedom of all people being unjustly targeted for advocating against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
“I am relieved at the court’s finding that my husband can move forward with his case in federal court,” added Abdalla, a U.S. citizen. “This is an important step towards securing Mahmoud’s freedom. But there is still more work to be done. I will continue to strongly advocate for my husband, so he can come home to our family, and feel the pure joy all parents know of holding your first-born child in your arms.”
All of these cases are expected to continue to move through the federal judicial system. One case—Abrego Garcia’s—has already reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite the high court’s right-wing supermajority, which includes three Trump appointees, the justices earlier this month unanimously ordered Trump to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.
During a Tuesday interview, ABC News anchor Terry Moran suggested that Trump could bring Abrego Garcia home to his family in Maryland with one phone call, saying: “You could get him back. There’s a phone on this desk.”
Trump responded: “I could… And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.” The president then accused him of being a member of the gang MS-13, which Abrego Garcia has denied.
On Wednesday, Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, toldCBS News that Abrego Garcia “is not under our control. He is an El Salvador citizen. He is home there in his country. If he were to be brought back to the United States of America, we would immediately deport him again.”
© 2025 All Rights Reserved