A group of Israeli citizens filed a legal document this week in support of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University who was taken into custody during his naturalization interview in April before he was released on bail.
The 26 Israeli citizens, most of whom are faculty members and students at the Ivy League school in New York, filed an amicus brief backing Mahdawi, a pro-Palestinian activist, in his ongoing immigration case. The government filed an appeal arguing that the federal district court did not have jurisdiction over Mahdawi’s claims and therefore did not have the authority to release him at the end of April. It called for a reversal of the district court’s decision. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to hear the case in the coming weeks.
The Israeli citizens who filed the brief say the arrest and detention of Mahdawi, whom they call a “driving force” behind efforts to foster peaceful relations between Israelis and Palestinians on campus, violated both his First Amendment rights and theirs. It is also the first time that Israeli citizens have filed in support of student activists targeted by the Trump administration.
Amicus briefs aim to provide expertise or insight to the court, but the people who file them are not parties in the lawsuits themselves.
“In arresting and detaining Mohsen, the Government sought to stifle Mohsen’s pro-peace, pro-Palestine advocacy,” the brief says. “But the intended effect of the Government’s actions toward Mohsen was to strike a blow against the broader movement for peace in Israel/Palestine,” which includes the group who filed the brief.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in response to questions about the arguments in the brief that it is a “privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America.”
“When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” the spokesperson said.
Mahdawi, a U.S. permanent resident who grew up in the al-Fara’a refugee camp, is expected to return to school for the fall semester to pursue a master’s degree. In April, he walked into what he believed was the “final stage” of a long pathway to citizenship, his attorneys said in court filings. The interview turned out to be a “trap,” the attorneys said.
“ICE agents, masked and visibly armed, entered the interview room and shackled Mr. Mahdawi,” court filings said.
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Officials said in court documents that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had determined that Mahdawi’s “presence and activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.”
The Israeli citizens’ brief argues that Mahdawi is the “antithesis of the government’s portrayal of him.” It describes his efforts to actively build ties between Israelis and Palestinians on the Columbia campus, including establishing a group that would engage in regular dialogue.
“There can be no dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians without Palestinians, and Mohsen initiated these conversations, was the first Palestinian to participate, and made it possible for other Palestinians to join,” the brief says.
Those behind the amicus brief also said Mahdawi was committed to fighting antisemitism. At a campus pro-Palestinian protest in 2023, for example, he led a crowd in chanting “shame on you” after a person began shouting antisemitic and anti-Black statements, the brief says. Mahdawi appeared on the CBS News show “60 Minutes” to talk about the incident, saying, “The fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Others have also joined in support of students the Trump administration has targeted because of their activism. A coalition of American Jewish organizations and congregations, including the Jewish Center for Justice, New York Jewish Agenda and J Street, filed an amicus brief in a separate case to back Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was arrested and detained for two months after she co-wrote an essay about Israel and the war in Gaza.
Öztürk, who was pulled off the street by masked agents in plainclothes near her Massachusetts campus, was released in May as her immigration case continues. The government is appealing her transfer from Louisiana to Vermont, which the district court granted in April, arguing that the court did not have the authority to allow the move.
In the amicus brief, the Jewish groups rejected the government’s argument, writing that Öztürk’s detention violated the “most basic constitutional rights.”
Victor Kovner, an attorney who filed the brief in the Öztürk case, told NBC News that the groups’ message to the Trump administration is to “stop using antisemitism as a weapon to attack their critics.”
“Antisemitism is real and growing, but the Trump administration is using it as a pretext to silence its critics or attack universities,” he said. Kovner also said that upon seeing the video of Öztürk’s arrest, many Jews “reacted with horror that this could take place in the United States in 2025.”
“We can fight antisemitism without trampling on basic constitutional freedoms,” he said.
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