For the second time in just a little greater than per week, attorneys have introduced that an immigration court docket has terminated deportation proceedings in opposition to a pro-Palestinian pupil after Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed they posed a menace to international coverage.
In response to a letter filed in court docket, attorneys for Mohsen Mahdawi, the Columbia College pupil who was detained at his naturalization interview in April, a decide has discovered that the Division of Homeland Safety “didn’t meet its burden of proving by clear and convincing proof” that he’s detachable.
It comes after an immigration court docket terminated elimination proceedings in opposition to Tufts College Ph.D. pupil Rümeysa Öztürk. Her attorneys introduced the order in a letter to the federal decide overseeing the case difficult her detention on Feb. 9.
Mohsen Mahdawi speaks outdoors the courthouse after a decide launched the Palestinian pupil activist on Wednesday, April 30, 2025 in Burlington, Vt. (AP Picture/Amanda Swinhart)
Amanda Swinhart/AP
For Mahdawi’s case, immigration decide Nina Froes seems to have primarily based her determination on the discovering that DHS didn’t authenticate a memo allegedly signed by Rubio claiming Mahdawi was a menace to U.S. international coverage.
Mahdawi’s attorneys have argued that, like different pro-Palestinian demonstrators, organizers and college students, he was being focused for his constitutionally protected speech.
Öztürk, like Mahdawi, was additionally labeled a international coverage danger by Rubio in a memo.
Each instances will be appealed by the Trump administration, so their habeas petitions will doubtless proceed to play out in federal court docket.
“I’m grateful to the court docket for honoring the rule of regulation and holding the road in opposition to the federal government’s makes an attempt to trample on due course of,” Mahdawi mentioned in a press release. “This determination is a crucial step in the direction of upholding what worry tried to destroy: the proper to talk for peace and justice.”
“In a local weather the place dissent is more and more met with intimidation and detention, at this time’s ruling renews hope that due course of nonetheless applies and that no company stands above the Structure,” he added.
Tufts College doctoral pupil Rumeysa Ozturk reads from a ready assertion following a court docket listening to outdoors the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, in Boston. (AP Picture/Leah Willingham)
Leah Willingham/AP
In response to a request for remark about each instances, the Division of Homeland Safety despatched a earlier assertion about Mahdawi and mentioned: “It’s a privilege to be granted a visa or inexperienced card to reside and examine in the USA of America. While you advocate for violence, glorify and assist terrorists that relish the killing of Individuals, and harass Jews, that privilege needs to be revoked, and also you shouldn’t be on this nation. No activist decide, not this one or another, goes to cease us from doing that.”
Mahdawi was detained in Vermont final spring throughout his citizenship interview. Arguing that he ought to proceed to be detained, attorneys for the Trump administration pointed to a 2015 FBI investigation, through which a gun store proprietor alleged that Mahdawi had claimed to have constructed machine weapons within the West Financial institution to kill Jews.
Nonetheless, the FBI closed that investigation and Mahdawi was by no means charged with any crime, a degree a federal decide highlighted when he ordered Mahdawi’s release.
In response to the federal government’s allegations in opposition to him, Mahdawi and his attorneys have firmly refuted allegations that he ever threatened Israelis or these of the Jewish religion. He informed ABC Information he has been advocating for peace and protesting in opposition to the warfare in Gaza.
“So for them to accuse me of this isn’t going to work, as a result of I’m an individual who really has condemned antisemitism,” Mahdawi mentioned. “And I imagine that the combat in opposition to antisemitism and the combat to free Palestine go hand in hand, as a result of, as Martin Luther King mentioned, injustice anyplace is a menace to justice in all places.”
Öztürk was detained in March by masked federal brokers, and the arrest was captured on digicam. Attorneys representing her mentioned she was focused, like different high-profile arrests of scholars, for her Professional-Palestinian views, particularly, for co-authoring an Op-Ed within the pupil paper in March 2024 calling on the college’s administration to take steps to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
A federal decide ordered her launch in Might.
“Right this moment, I breathe a sigh of aid understanding that regardless of the justice system’s flaws, my case might give hope to those that have additionally been wronged by the U.S. authorities,” Öztürk mentioned in a press release on Feb. 9. “Although the ache that I and hundreds of different ladies wrongfully imprisoned by ICE have confronted can’t be undone, it’s heartening to know that some justice can prevail in spite of everything.”
