ICE officials detained a Columbia University graduate student who led a coalition of anti-Israel groups and endorsed the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.
ICE officials detained a Columbia University graduate student who led a coalition of anti-Israel groups and endorsed the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.
Mohsen Mahdawi had his green card revoked by the Trump administration and was taken into custody on Monday in Burlington, Vt., where he was scheduled to take a citizenship test. Mahdawi’s attorney told the Intercept that Mahdawi was detained for his « Palestinian identity » and that he had come « to this country hoping to be free to speak about the atrocities he has witnessed. »
A public ICE database on Monday afternoon listed Mahdawi, who was born in Jordan, as being in custody.
But Mahdawi, a graduate philosophy student in Columbia’s School of General Studies, has also said he « can empathize » with Hamas over the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 slaughter and has publicly called for the destruction of Israel. Last year, he honored a commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a U.S.-designated terror group that participated in the attack alongside Hamas.
Most recently, Mahdawi served as co-president of Columbia’s Palestinian Students Union, a coalition of anti-Israel student groups, including Columbia’s suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters. The union has organized protests calling for Columbia’s divestment from Israel alongside Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student organization behind the illegal encampments that plagued the school last spring and led to the violent storming of a campus building, Hamilton Hall.
