A high-stokes clash between the second Trump administration and campus pro-Palestinian dissent has reignited after the US Board of Immigration Appeals reinstated deportation proceedings against Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian US green card holder and prominent organizer of last year’s anti-war protests at Columbia University, his legal team confirmed this week.
Mahdawi, 34, a master’s student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, first encountered immigration enforcement in mid-April 2024, when US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained him during a scheduled citizenship interview in Vermont. The detention came directly after he took part in campus demonstrations opposing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. He was released from custody two weeks later, but the threat of deportation hung over him as the active proceedings remained unresolved.
In February 2025, a federal immigration judge had blocked the Trump administration’s push to deport Mahdawi. The ruling centered on a critical procedural flaw: the government attempted to enter a removal order memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio as evidence using only an unauthenticated photocopy. Judge Nina Froes, who issued that ruling, noted that while the document was relevant to the case, it could not be admitted without proper verification, a standard legal requirement. Just one month after issuing the ruling that halted Mahdawi’s deportation, the Trump administration removed Judge Froes from her position.
Mahdawi, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank and relocated to the United States a decade ago, holds permanent US residency (green card) status. In 2023, he co-founded Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union alongside Mahmoud Khalil, another leading pro-Palestinian student organizer who has also been targeted by the US government. In a shift from frontline protest organizing in 2024, The Intercept reports Mahdawi stepped back from leading demonstrations to pursue cross-community dialogue, reaching out to build connections with Jewish and Israeli students and faculty on campus.
As part of that outreach effort, Mahdawi invited Shai Davidai, a pro-Israel Columbia assistant professor who has faced repeated accusations of harassing pro-Palestinian student activists, to a public coffee meeting. According to multiple accounts, Davidai left the discussion abruptly before it concluded. Less than two months after the meeting, Davidai published a video of Mahdawi on the social platform X, formerly Twitter, where he accused Mahdawi and other protest leaders of antisemitism and supporting Hamas.
The reinstatement of Mahdawi’s deportation proceedings is not an isolated case. Last month, the Trump administration dismissed six immigration judges, including both Froes and the judge who blocked the deportation of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish pro-Palestinian student at Tufts University who was targeted after co-writing an op-ed critical of Israel’s war in Gaza.
In a prepared statement released by his legal team Wednesday, Mahdawi pushed back against the government’s actions, arguing that the current administration has deliberately used immigration policy as a tool to suppress dissent. “The government continues to weaponize the immigration system to silence dissent,” Mahdawi said in the statement.