Mohsen Mahdawi, an organizer of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia University, was freed from federal custody on Wednesday after immigration officials sought to rescind his green card.
In ruling to release Mr. Mahdawi, a federal judge, Geoffrey W. Crawford, found on Wednesday that he did not pose a danger to the public and that he was not a flight risk. The judge referenced cases from the 1950s and the specter of McCarthyism, saying this was “not our proudest moment.”
Mr. Mahdawi’s release is a defeat for the Trump administration in its widening crackdown against student protesters, although other students remain in detention as part of the government’s campaign. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has argued that immigration authorities have the right to eject even legal residents from the country for protest activities that the government says harm America’s foreign policy interests.
After his release on Wednesday, Mr. Mahdawi struck a defiant tone.
“I am saying it clear and loud, to President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” he said.
Mr. Mahdawi, 34, had been in custody since April 14, when immigration officials detained him at an appointment in Vermont that he thought was a step toward becoming a U.S. citizen. Judge Crawford ordered that Mr. Mahdawi be released from the detention facility where he had been held in the state.
As he walked out of a courthouse in Burlington, Vt., he raised his hands in the peace sign and approached a pack of television news cameras that awaited him.
“They arrested me. What’s the reason? Because I raised my voice, and I said no to war, yes to peace,” Mr. Mahdawi said. “Because I said, ‘Enough is enough. Killing more than 50,000 Palestinians is more than enough.’ ”
A green card holder for the past 10 years, Mr. Mahdawi was not accused of a crime. Rather, Mr. Rubio wrote in a memo justifying his arrest that his activism “could undermine the Middle East peace process by reinforcing antisemitic sentiment.”
Mr. Mahdawi’s lawyers had requested a temporary restraining order to prevent federal officials from transferring him to a more conservative jurisdiction — a tactic that was used in the detention and attempted deportation of at least four other college demonstrators, including Mahmoud Khalil, a fellow demonstrator and legal permanent resident who has been in a Louisiana detention facility since last month.
Another Vermont federal judge, William K. Sessions III, swiftly granted that request, ordering that Mr. Mahdawi, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, not be removed from the United States or transferred out of Vermont until he ordered otherwise. Judge Crawford then extended the decision to keep Mr. Mahdawi in the state until Wednesday’s ruling.
Shortly after Mr. Mahdawi’s release, his attorneys said that he would be allowed to finish his academic program at Columbia.
“Today’s victory cannot be overstated. It is a victory for Mohsen who gets to walk free today out of this court,” said Shezza Abboushi Dallal, a member of Mr. Mahdawi’s legal team. “And it is also a victory for everyone else in this country invested in the very ability to dissent, who want to be able to speak out for the causes that they feel a moral imperative to lend their voices to and want to do that without fear that they will be abducted by masked men.”
The Trump administration had sought to deport Mr. Mahdawi using the same legal provision that it is using to detain Mr. Khalil, contending that his presence is a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States. Federal officials have argued that pro-Palestinian demonstrators have enabled the spread of antisemitism, but they have not provided evidence of that.
In April, an immigration judge in Louisiana found that federal officials could deport Mr. Khalil, and the Department of Homeland Security later denied him permission to attend the birth of his first child, who was delivered at a New York hospital.
In recent weeks, Mr. Mahdawi had been in hiding, worried about being arrested by immigration police after Mr. Khalil was detained at campus housing at Columbia. He asked the university for help but did not receive it. An extreme pro-Israel group, Betar, had warned on social media that he was next to be detained.
But he was determined to appear for an interview he had been told was related to his naturalization, even though he feared it was a trap. He alerted Vermont’s senators and representative in case things went wrong, and before the appointment, he studied the Constitution, preparing for a naturalization test.
Instead, immigration officers, some with their faces covered, placed Mr. Mahdawi in handcuffs and arrested him, according to a statement released by Vermont’s two senators, Bernie Sanders, an Independent, and Peter Welch, a Democrat, and Representative Becca Balint, a Democrat.
Carolyn Shapiro contributed reporting.
Ana Ley is a Times reporter covering immigration in New York City.
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