Columbia Student Released After ICE Arrest Raises Free Speech Concerns

Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was released from federal immigration custody on Wednesday after a judge’s order, weeks after being arrested in Vermont.

Mahdawi, 34, is a Legal Permanent Resident who has held that status for ten years. He has been attending Columbia University as an undergraduate student since 2021 and helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at the university last year.

On April 14, in an incident that was recorded on video, he was arrested by immigration authorities under the Trump administration. The government accused him of “engaging in threatening rhetoric and intimidation of pro-Israeli bystanders” and attempted to deport him.

However, U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford ruled that Mahdawi does not appear to be a threat or a flight risk in the community, noting that his release was in the public interest to protect his First Amendment right to free speech.

Crawford wrote that legal residents are being arrested and threatened with deportation for expressing their political views. “Our nation has seen times like this before,” he said, “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.”

“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that the government can’t lock you up or deport you because of your political views,” said Ramya Krishnan, a lawyer at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “That’s literally the most important thing about this country.”

Since President Donald Trump took office, there have been several cases where U.S. citizens were taken into custody for deportation. For instance, Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen, was detained on April 16 by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper during a traffic stop and falsely accused of entering the country illegally.