Mohsen Mahdawi, organizer of the pre-Palestinian movement at Columbia University, was released by federal editing on Wednesday, more than two weeks after the reservation of immigration officials and attempted to cancel his green card as part of a part of an expanded student.
With the release of Mr Mahdawi on guarantees, Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford of the Federal Regional Court in Vermont threw in parallel between the current political climate and the McCarthyism.
“This is not the first time the nation has seen cold action from the government that intended to close the debate,” Judge Crawford said.
The liberation of Mr Mahdawi, a permanent legal resident, is a defeat for Trump’s administration, though it does not mean the end of the federal government’s action against him. The migration case will continue, but will be able to fight it outside a detention unit.
Mr Mahdawi hit a provocative tone after his release.
“I say it is clear and loud, to President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” he said.
The minister, Marco Rubio, argued that protesters such as Mr Mahdawi have spread anti -Semitism, while protesters say the criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza is not anti -Semitic.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, denounces Judge Crawford’s decision to a social media position.
“When you support violence, you glorify and support terrorists who enjoy the murder of Americans and Jews, that the privilege must be revoked and you must not be in this country,” Mrs McLaughlin said, without providing evidence to support her accusations.
Mr Mahdawi, 34, has been in custody since April 14, when immigration officials kept him at a Vermont appointment, where he was resident, that he believed it was a step towards the American citizen.
In the granting of Mr Mahdawi’s release, Judge Crawford reported his extensive ties to his community and said he did not put no risk to the public. He noted that the court had received more than 90 submissions from community members, academic experts and teachers who know Mr Mahdawi, “many of them Jews”, confirming his character and steadily describing him as “peaceful”.
The judge also talked about the “extraordinary conditions” of Mr Mahdawi’s detention and the present moment of history.
Michael Drescher, a US lawyer in Vermont, who supported Trump on behalf of Trump, said immigration officials had a stable legal reason to keep Mr Mahdawi as they considered the deportation case.
Mr Drescher noted that Mr Mahdawi is not a US citizen and has access to resources that would allow him to leave the country. “His detention is not illegal,” Mr Drescher said.
Court’s judge Crawford’s Burlington was full on Wednesday with Mr Mahdawi’s supporters, who remained noisy as the judge issued his order. Some began to hit as Mr Mahdawi was able to collect his belongings and leave immediately.
Dressed in a plaid suit and wearing gold glasses with wire, Mr Mahdawi threw a kaffiyeh around his shoulders. As he came out of the court in a happy reception, he raised his hands on the mark of peace.
“They arrested me, what is the reason? Because I put my voice and said no to war, yes to peace,” Mr Mahdawi said. “Because I said,” enough is enough. The murder of more than 50,000 Palestinians is more than enough. ”
A green card holder for the last 10 years, Mr Mahdawi has not been accused of crime. On the contrary, Mr Rubio wrote in a note that justified his arrest that his activism “could undermine the peace process of the Middle East by enhancing the anti -Semitic feeling”.
Mr Rubio said the migration authorities have the right to even launch legal residents from the country for protest activities that the government says it is harming the interests of America’s foreign policy.
Mr Mahdawi’s lawyers asked for a temporary restraint order to prevent federal officials from transferring him to more conservative jurisdiction.
This tactic has been used in the detention and attempt to expulsion at least four other protesters, including Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident and a graduate of Columbia, who was in Louisiana detention since last month.
Another federal judge in Vermont, William K. Sessions III, quickly administered this request, ordering that Mr Mahdawi, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp on the West Bank, not to be removed from the United States or moved from Vermont.
Judge Crawford then expanded the decision to keep Mr Mahdawi in the state until Wednesday’s decision.
Shortly after Mr Mahdawi’s release, his lawyers said he would be allowed to complete his academic program in Columbia.
“Today’s victory cannot be overestimated. It is a victory for Mohsen who gets free from this court today,” said one of the lawyers, Shezza Abboushi Dallal.
“And it is also a victory for everyone else in this country that is invested in the ability to disagree, who want to be able to talk about the causes that feel a moral check to lend their voices and want to do so without fear that they will abduct from masks.”
Although Mr Mahdawi is still in danger of deportation, his release from detention will give him a much stronger opportunity to challenge the government’s claims, said Joshua Bardavid, a lawyer in New York.
“It is much harder to fight a case than detention, first of all, because the government is getting the space,” Bardavid said. “In general, there is a case where some courts are held and some courts are known to be much more to the government than other locations.”
Because Mr Mahdawi was released in Vermont, his case is likely to be heard in the northeast, Mr Bardavid said.
Trump’s administration tried to deport Mr Mahdawi using the same legal provision he used to keep Mr Khalil to Manhattan before transporting him to Louisiana.
The government argued that its presence is a threat to the interests of foreign policy and national security of the United States. Federal officials argued that pre-Palestinian protesters allowed anti-Semitism to spread, but have not provided data on it.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokesman, said that the administration considers the study in the United States as “a great privilege, not a right”, and that any non -political security guy who hurts national security or commits a crime “should be displaced immediately”.
In April, a Louisiana migration judge found that federal officials could displace Mr Khalil and his internal security ministry later refused permission to attend the birth of his first child, who surrendered to a hospital.
In recent weeks, Mr Mahdawi had been hidden, worried that he was arrested by police after Mr Khalil’s detention at the Campus House in Columbia. He asked for help from the university, but he didn’t get it. An extreme group in favor of Israel, Betar, had warned of the social media that he was next to it.
But he was determined to appear for an interview he said he was related to his naturalization, even though he was afraid he was a trap. He warned the senators and representatives of Vermond if things went wrong and before the appointment, he studied the Constitution, preparing for a naturalization test.
Instead, the immigration officers, some with their faces covered, put Mr Mahdawi handcuffed and arrested him, according to a statement published by the Vermont Congress delegation, Senators Peter Welch and a spokesman for Becca Balint and the two Democrats.
On Wednesday, legislators expressed the relief that Mr Mahdawi was released from detention and said that his constitutional right to a fair process had prevailed. They said he had done nothing wrong and had unfairly targeted the federal government.
“The actions of the Trump administration in this case – and in so many other cases of unjustified prisoners, deportations and extinct people – are shameful and immoral,” they said in a statement. In Columbia campus, the news of Mr Mahdawi’s liberation from the federal curator were greeting as a major first step.
Gabriella Ramirez, a second -year postgraduate student and a member of the University Senate who knows Mr Mahdawi, said that “he was very encouraged to see the justice system to work with the liberation of Mohsen from illegal detention”.
He added: “I remain optimistic that we will see a similar result for my classmate Mahmoud Khalil.”
Torque and Carolyn shapiro They contributed reports.
