An immigration courtroom in the United States has delivered a sharp rebuke to an attempt to deport a student activist, underscoring the limits of executive power in politically charged cases.
A judge declined to order the removal of Mohsen Mahdawi, a student at Columbia University, who had been taken into custody after participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus. The ruling concluded that the government failed to prove he was legally removable.
The case forms part of a broader crackdown that sought to place non-citizen students involved in pro-Palestinian campus activism under immigration scrutiny. Authorities had relied, in part, on a document bearing the signature of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But the judge found the document unauthenticated and insufficient to meet the government’s burden.
Mahdawi, who grew up in a refugee camp in the West Bank, was detained in April 2025 when he appeared for an interview connected to his U.S. citizenship application. His arrest triggered immediate legal intervention. A federal court in Vermont barred authorities from deporting him or transferring him out of the state. Within weeks, U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered his release from custody.
In a statement, Mahdawi described the immigration judge’s decision as a reaffirmation of the right to advocate for peace without fear of exile.
The government, through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, criticized the ruling and signaled it may pursue further review before the Board of Immigration Appeals, which functions under the U.S. Department of Justice.
This is not an isolated ruling. In a separate matter, removal proceedings against Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, were terminated earlier this year. Ozturk had drawn attention after co-authoring an opinion piece critical of her university’s response to the war in Gaza.
More recently, a federal court in Boston concluded that the administration had adopted an unlawful approach toward detaining and deporting non-citizen scholars engaged in campus speech. That decision is now under appeal.
Together, the rulings sketch a legal boundary: while visas and green cards may be privileges, courts are signaling that political expression alone cannot serve as a shortcut to deportation.
