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An immigration judge has blocked the Trump administration from deporting Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian legal permanent resident who led protests at Columbia University against Israel and the war in Gaza. In a ruling made public Tuesday, Judge Nina Froes terminated the case after finding a procedural flaw in the evidence the government sought to rely on.
Froes said she had ended the proceedings because government attorneys failed to properly certify an official document they intended to use as evidence. The decision gives Mahdawi a temporary reprieve as the administration weighs whether to appeal, according to the report.
The deportation dispute is part of a broader federal effort described by the reporting as aimed at expelling pro-Palestinian campus activists and others who have criticized Israel. The report notes that in a separate case last month, another immigration judge blocked the government’s attempt to deport a Tufts University graduate student, Rümeysa Öztürk, over an op-ed criticizing the school’s response to the war in Gaza.
Mahdawi has been in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident for the last decade, the report said. He was born in a refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and immigration agents arrested him during a citizenship interview last April, before a federal judge released him about two weeks later.
After that, the government continued pursuing deportation, the report said, citing a memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that argued noncitizens can be removed from the country if their presence may undermine U.S. foreign policy interests. Government attorneys submitted a photocopy of the document to the immigration judge, but Froes ruled it was not properly certified under federal law.
Mahdawi’s attorneys said he responded to the ruling with gratitude for what they characterized as the court’s adherence to due process. In a statement released by his attorneys, Mahdawi said he was “grateful to the court for honoring the rule of law and holding the line against the government’s attempts to trample on due process,” adding that the decision was “an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice.”
Separately, Mahdawi has also mounted a federal lawsuit challenging what his lawyers described as unlawful detention, which the report said remains ongoing. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security did not concede defeat. In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, cast Mahdawi as a leader of “pro-terrorist riots” whose visa should be revoked, and she added: “No activist judge, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.”