A federal judge dealt a blow to the Trump administration and ordered it to release a Columbia University student Wednesday who was arrested at his U.S. citizenship appointment.
Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, walked free after weeks in jail over accusations he harmed America’s foreign policy interests. His arrest April 14 came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used provision of immigration law, which gave Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem the green light to arrest foreign students in the name of national security.
Noem has cosplayed as an agent herself during raids.
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She shared a snap this week of her riding an ATV, and had previously ridden on horseback near the Mexican border. She often goes into the field glammed up in full makeup and a bulletproof vest, and has strongly backed Rubio’s push to end visas for foreign students whose demonstrations she perceives as anti-American.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America,” she said in March. “When you advocate for violence and terrorism, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”
Mahdawi, a Palestinian green card holder, was a key organizer of protests at Columbia last year. His release was ordered by U.S. District Judge William Sessions III, who was appointed to the bench in 1995 by Democratic president Bill Clinton. Sessions equated the arrest of Mahdawi and other demonstrators to how the Red Scare and McCarthyism led to improper arrests in the 20th century.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s prosecutors at the Department of Justice argued that Mahdawi should be detained and deported because he supposedly admitted to “being involved in and supporting antisemitic acts of violence.”
Among the evidence against Mahdawi, according to prosecutors, was that he once told a gun shop owner in Vermont that he used to build machine guns “to kill Jews while he was in Palestine.”
Mahdawi contested that the gun shop interaction—and any others like it—never happened.
“I am a peaceful person, and would never express wanting to harm or kill anyone,” he wrote in a declaration submitted to the court. “I am heartbroken to have such appalling words, which stand in complete contrast to my philosophy on life and spiritual beliefs, misattributed to me.”
Sessions ultimately sided with Mahdawi and his legal team, possibly opening the door for other federal judges to follow suit in similar arrests made by ICE Barbie who are being prosecuted by Bondi’s team.
Noem has sicced federal agents on other foreign students who were involved in campus protests last year—something critics like Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders say is a First Amendment violation and an attack on free speech.
Mahdawi’s first order of business after spending over two weeks in immigration custody was to call out President Donald Trump and his acolytes.
“I am saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” Mahdawi told a group of reporters and supporters at the courthouse.
