Activist Mohsen Mahdawi Freed From Prison After Judge Orders His Release

Palestinian Columbia University student activist Mohsen Mahdawi was freed from federal custody on Wednesday after a Vermont judge ordered his release, condemning the Trump administration’s McCarthyist tactics in its targeted attack on advocates for Palestinian rights across the U.S.

“I am saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” Mahdawi told a crowd of supporters outside of the courthouse after his release, donning a keffiyeh.

“What we are witnessing now and what we’re understanding is exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King has said before: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he went on.

U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered Mahdawi to be released on bail as his case continues. Local news sources who were present in the courtroom reported that Crawford said that he believes Mahdawi is not a flight risk.

The judge compared the Trump administration’s targeting of Mahdawi and other immigrants to the suppression of people with left-wing views during the Red Scare and McCarthy eras.

“Our nation has seen times like this before, especially during the Red Scare and Palmer Raids of 1919-1920 that led to the deportation of hundreds of people suspected of anarchist or communist views,” Crawford wrote in his order. “The wheel of history has come around again, but as before these times of excess will pass.”

Mahdawi, a green card holder who has lived in the U.S. for a decade, was seized by federal immigration agents two weeks ago after officials called him in for what was supposedly the final interview for him to attain citizenship. Instead, agents took him into custody under orders from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is seeking to deport Mahdawi to his birthplace of the occupied West Bank.

As part of the conditions of his release, the Columbia University student will be allowed to travel to New York to attend school and meet with his lawyers, but is otherwise ordered to stay in Vermont.

An internal memo by Rubio on Mahdawi claimed, without substantial evidence, that Mahdawi’s presence in the U.S. threatens the U.S.’s supposed goal of combating antisemitism worldwide — a clear euphemism for opposing Palestinian rights and suppressing those who advocate for Palestinians amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The government made similar arguments in court, saying that Mahdawi has admitted “to being involved in and supporting antisemitic acts of violence,” citing a Vermont gun shop owner who told police that Mahdawi admitted to such acts. Mahdawi categorically denied the claims, saying that he did once visit a gun shop in Vermont but that he is “absolutely certain” that he never expressed such sentiment.

“I am a peaceful person, and would never express wanting to harm or kill anyone,” he wrote in a declaration to the court, per NBC. “I am heartbroken to have such appalling words, which stand in complete contrast to my philosophy on life and spiritual beliefs, misattributed to me.”

In an interview with NPR ahead of his hearing this week, Mahdawi said that he was maintaining hope that he would be released and that justice would prevail in his case.

“The injustice that I am facing here and the injustice that the antiwar movement is facing, is also connected to the injustice that the Palestinian people are going through,” he said. “We’re talking about 55,000 people have been killed. We see children being killed, amputated, losing their parents, no homes. This is what’s moving us.”