Dem
47
GOP
53
Mohsen Mahdawi came to the U.S. in 2014 and is now a legal resident with a green card. He is a student at Columbia University and took part there in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. On April 14, ICE arrested him at his naturalization interview and has held him since, pending deportation based on a law that allows the removal of a noncitizen deemed to undermine U.S. foreign policy. Mahdawi has not been charged with any crime.
Mahdawi's lawyers challenged his arrest and pending deportation. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford, a Barack Obama appointee, ordered Mahdawi released immediately while his habeas corpus case continues. Crawford likened the current climate to the McCarthy era of the 1950s. At a packed hearing, Crawford said the government had failed to show that Mahdawi was a danger to the community or a flight risk. Crawford noted that over 125 letters from Mahdawi's neighbors, professors, and friends, some of them Jewish, had been submitted to attest to his commitment to nonviolence. The government complied with the judge's order, so Mahdawi is free for the moment, but his deportation case continues. After leaving the courthouse on his own, Mahdawi said (to Trump): "I am not afraid of you." (V)