Student protest leader Mohsen Mahdawi has appeared at the Vermont state house to help launch a legal defence fund to help immigrants like himself who are facing deportation hearings.
His appearance on Thursday comes nearly a week after Mahdawi himself was released from immigration detention, after spending nearly 16 days in custody for his pro-Palestinian advocacy.
The administration of President Donald Trump has sought to deport Mahdawi and other student activists for their demonstrations, citing a Cold War-era law that allows the removal of foreign nationals deemed to have adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.
Though released on bail, Mahdawi continues to face deportation proceedings. He reflected on his time behind bars at a news conference where he and state officials announced the Vermont Immigration Legal Defense Fund.
“ I was unjustly kidnapped or detained, if you want to go by the legal term,” Mahdawi said with a wry smile.
“And without the support and the love that I received from the people of Vermont – Vermonters and the representatives of the people in Vermont – I may not have been here today among you.”
Mahdawi entered the national spotlight as a leader in the student protests at Columbia University, an Ivy League school in New York City that has been at the forefront of pro-Palestinian advocacy.
A legal permanent resident of the US, Mahdawi himself is Palestinian and grew up in the Far’a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. He has publicly described the oppression he said he experienced there, including the deaths of family members and friends at the hands of the Israeli military.
Since Israel launched its war in Gaza on October 7, 2023, Mahdawi has been outspoken in his opposition to the military campaign.
As an undergraduate at Columbia, he helped found student groups like Dar: The Palestinian Student Society and Columbia University Apartheid Divest. The latter has taken a lead role in protesting ties between the school and organisations involved with Israel and its military activities.
But President Trump has described such protests as “illegal” and pledged to crack down on non-citizen participants.
On March 8, Mahdawi’s colleague at Dar, Mahmoud Khalil, was the first student protester to be taken into custody for his role in the nationwide student protest movement. Others have since been detained, including Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk, who supporters say did little more than write an op-ed about the war in Gaza.
Just over a month later, on April 14, Mahdawi arrived at an appointment in Colchester, Vermont, ostensibly for his US citizenship application. Immigration officers, however, were waiting on site to arrest him, and he was led away in h