Associate University Columbia Mahmoud Khalil Arrested by DHS

A Columbia University student who joined in establishing, with Mahmoud Khalil, a university organization called Palestine Student Union was arrested Monday by the Homeland Department of Security, his lawyer told ABC News.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a permanent resident in the US, was arrested and detained after attending a naturalized interview in Vermont.

US District Judge William Sessions then gave a Mahdawi lawyer a temporary detention order that prohibited the government from moving Mahdawi out of the Vermont District “Waiting for Further Orders” from the court.

At Columbia University, Mahdawi was “the vocal critic of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and an activist and organizer in the student protest on the Columbia campus until March 2024, after that he took a step back and had not been involved in organizing,” according to the Habeas petition obtained by ABC News.

Mahdawi’s lawyer called his arrest “breaking the law” and said it violated the first amendment.

“The arrest and detention of Mr. Mahdawi who violated the law occurred after respondents adopted policies … to reply and punish their citizens for their expressive speeches and behavior related to Palestine and Israel,” the lawyer said.

A spokesman for immigration and customs enforcement referred ABC news to the Department of Foreign Affairs, who did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

According to his habeas petition, Mahdawi was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, until 2014 when he moved to the United States. He has been a legitimate population for the past 10 years and is expected to graduate from Columbia next month.

In December 2023, Mahdawi appeared on the TV news show “60 Minutes,” where he shared that “as a child, he witnessed an Israeli soldier shooting and killing his best friend in the West Bank,” said the petition.

“Mr. Mahdawi was afraid that, if he lost the status of a legitimate permanent population and he was moved to the West Bank, he would experience the same harassment, detention and torture that his family had experienced, and would be in a danger that was even deeper in the bright campaign that had targeted and spread lies about him,” said his lawyer.

Mahdawi’s lawyer believes that, such as Khalil, he became the target of Trump’s administration under the Immigration and National Law Section 237 (a) (4) (c) (i), which states that the State Secretary can consider someone who can be deported if they have a reasonable basis to believe that the presence or activities of the person in the US can have consequences of foreign policy provided.

In the court proposed in the Khalil Immigration case, DHS submitted a two-page memo from the Secretary of State Marco Rubio who stated that the law gave him the power to determine someone could be deported even if their actions “if it was invalid.”

Rubio wrote that Khalil had to be deported because of his alleged role in “antisemite protests and disturbing activities, which pushed hostile environments for Jewish students in the United States.”

An immigration judge decided on Friday that Khalil could be deported based on that reason.

Khalil, a green card holder and a permanent law inhabitants who were married to American citizens, were arrested with immigration and customs enforcement in his Columbia housing in March after helping to lead protests in Columbia for the war in Gaza. He took part in the negotiating with the school administrator who demanded the institution to decide on relations with Israel and release from Israeli companies.

Khalil completed a postgraduate study in Columbia in December and will graduate in spring.

ABC News’ Luke Barr contributes to this report.