Columbia Pro-Palestinian Protest Leader Seeking Citizenship Detained by ICE

COLCHESTER, Vt.—Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on April 14 during a naturalization interview in Vermont. The move comes weeks after the detention of Mahdawi’s Columbia associate, Mahmound Khalil, as the Trump administration continues to target non-citizen students in a crackdown on alleged support for Hamas during university protests in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by the terrorist group on Israel. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that allows non-citizen students to be deported for expressing views aligned with Hamas and accused protesters of anti-Semitic activities on campuses. Mahdawi’s attorneys issued a habeas corpus petition the same day as his detention, April 14. It alleges his detention violates the First and Fifth Amendments, saying the student’s “speech regarding Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, human rights, international law, obligations arising from international law, and related matters is speech protected by the First Amendment.”...