Latest news with #MohsenMahdawi
The Intercept
09-07-2025
- Politics
- The Intercept
How The Intercept Fought Courts to Reveal Key Evidence in Student Deportation Cases
Support Us © THE INTERCEPT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Mohsen Mahdawi speaks during an interview at the ACLU of Vermont on Thursday, May 8, 2025, in Montpelier, Vt. Photo: AP Photo / Alex Driehaus The Trump administration's efforts to deport students and campus activists have been cloaked in secrecy, whether it's the masked agents that snatched Rümeysa Öztürk off the streets, the arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi at what should have been his citizenship interview, or the government's shifting legal arguments to detain them. The troubling lack of transparency extended to court battles, too. In the cases of both Öztürk and Mahdawi, an obscure court rule required an in-person visit to a Vermont federal courthouse to review key materials, including the Trump administration's briefs and exhibits defending their detention. These cases are critical tests of free speech and the constitutional limits on targeting noncitizens over their dissent. So The Intercept fought to make the full dockets public. So far, we've been successful in eight federal courts, six districts, and two federal appellate circuits — and we're doing the same in other cases across the country. Here's how we're doing it. In every case, The Intercept started by reaching out to the plaintiff's legal team. The docket access restrictions in these historic court cases come from Rule 5.2(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which aims to protect immigrants' privacy as they challenge detention and deportation orders in court. This means that the strongest argument in favor of lifting the restrictions is that the plaintiffs themselves want the public to have full access to court filings, or at least don't oppose it. In some cases, the plaintiffs and their legal teams were already publishing court documents online, although there was often a lag between when a document was filed in court and when it was accessible to the press. After The Intercept reached out, many plaintiffs filed motions to lift the docket restrictions, including Öztürk and class-action plaintiffs challenging their deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. Judges quickly granted many of these motions. In other cases, The Intercept sent letters to the judges and clerks to underscore the importance of court transparency and urge them to lift the restrictions. Some judges and clerks ignored these letters, while others took these concerns quite seriously. In one pivotal case regarding arbitrary visa revocations, for example, federal district judge Ana Reyes noted The Intercept's request on the case docket and asked if there was any opposition to making records in the case available to the public. When the plaintiff and the government confirmed there was no objection, Reyes ordered the clerk to lift the docket restrictions. In May, The Intercept sent similar letters to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals about the Öztürk and Mahdawi cases. Öztürk had previously asked the trial court to lift the restrictions, but the judge didn't rule on that request before the Trump administration appealed. The Second Circuit clerk's office quickly docketed The Intercept's letters, and within two days the full appellate record was publicly accessible in both cases. Soon after, the trial court judges lifted the restrictions in both cases, too. Finally, in some cases, opening dockets to the public required The Intercept to file formal court motions. In the case of Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman who is still in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in Texas, The Intercept filed a motion with pro bono representation from the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. In Massachusetts federal court, The Intercept filed a motion in the case of Efe Ercelik, a Turkish student at Hampshire College, with pro bono representation from Albert Sellars LLP. And most recently, in late June, The Intercept filed a motion in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the case of Badar Khan Suri, a scholar at Georgetown University, with pro bono help from attorneys at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In each case, judges quickly lifted restrictions following The Intercept's motions. As the Trump administration continues its historic deportation campaign and targets immigrants for their dissent, new cases are being filed everyday with similar docket restrictions under Rule 5.2(c). And The Intercept is working to ensure the public and other members of the press have full, transparent access to court records in these historic battles over dissent, immigrants' rights, and state power. Join The Conversation
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First Post
21-06-2025
- Politics
- First Post
US judge orders release of pro-Palestinian Columbia graduate from immigration custody
Khalil was the latest in a string of foreign pro-Palestinian students arrested in the U.S. starting in March who have subsequently been released by a judge. They include Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysya Ozturk read more A U.S. judge ordered on Friday that Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil be released immediately from immigration custody, a major victory for rights groups that challenged what they called the Trump administration's unlawful targeting of a pro-Palestinian activist. Khalil, a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel's war on Gaza, was arrested by immigration agents in the lobby of his university residence in Manhattan on March 8. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has called the protests antisemitic and vowed to deport foreign students who took part. Khalil became the first target of this policy. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD After hearing oral arguments from lawyers for Khalil and for the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, ordered DHS to release him from custody at a jail for immigrants in rural Louisiana by as soon as 6:30 pm (7:30 ET) on Friday. Farbiarz said the government had made no attempt to rebut evidence provided by Khalil's lawyers that he was not a flight risk nor a danger to the public. 'There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner (Khalil),' Farbiarz said as he ruled from the bench, adding that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter was unconstitutional. Khalil was the latest in a string of foreign pro-Palestinian students arrested in the U.S. starting in March who have subsequently been released by a judge. They include Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysya Ozturk. Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., says he is being punished for his political speech in violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. Khalil condemned antisemitism and racism in interviews with CNN and other news outlets last year. The Syrian-born activist plans to return to New York to be with his wife Dr. Noor Abdalla and their infant son who was born during Khalil's 104 days in detention. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'This ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others," Abdalla said in a statement. 'Today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken for speaking out for Palestinian freedom." The White House condemned the decision to release Khalil, saying he should be deported for 'conduct detrimental to American foreign policy interests' and fraudulently obtaining a student visa. 'There is no basis for a local federal judge in New Jersey —who lacks jurisdiction — to order Khalil's release from a detention facility in Louisiana,' White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement. 'We expect to be vindicated on appeal." Even though a federal judge ordered Khalil be freed, the immigration proceedings against him continue. The Louisiana immigration judge in his case on Friday denied his asylum request, ruled he could be deported based on the government's allegations of immigration fraud, and denied a bail hearing. Farbiarz's decision rendered the bail request moot. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Like others facing deportation, Khalil has avenues to appeal within the immigration system. Farbiarz is also considering Khalil's challenge of his deportation on constitutional grounds, and has blocked officials from deporting Khalil while that challenge plays out. Earlier this month, Farbiarz ruled the government was violating Khalil's free speech rights by detaining him under a little-used law granting the U.S. secretary of state power to seek deportation of non-citizens whose presence in the country was deemed adverse to U.S. foreign policy interests. On June 13, the judge declined to order Khalil's release from a detention center in Jena, Louisiana, after Trump's administration said Khalil was being held on a separate charge that he withheld information from his application for lawful permanent residency. Khalil's lawyers deny that allegation and say people are rarely detained on such charges. On June 16, they urged Farbiarz to grant a separate request from their client to be released on bail or be transferred to immigration detention in New Jersey to be closer to his family in New York. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD At Friday's hearing, Farbiarz said it was 'highly unusual' for the government to jail an immigrant accused of omissions in his application for U.S. permanent residency. Khalil, 30, became a U.S. permanent resident last year, and his wife and newborn son are U.S. citizens. Trump administration lawyers wrote in a June 17 filing that Khalil's request for release should be addressed to the judge overseeing his immigration case, an administrative process over whether he can be deported, rather than to Farbiarz, who is considering whether Khalil's March 8 arrest and subsequent detention were constitutional.
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
50501 Vermont plans 40+ ‘No Kings' protests on Saturday
BURLINGTON, Vt. (ABC22/FOX44) – A nationwide protest movement will be holding more than 40 events in Vermont this weekend, including an American flag that will travel all the way north from Massachusetts to Swanton. Protests against Trump administration planned across Vermont this week 50501 Vermont, the state's affiliate of the 50501 movement – short for '50 states, 50 protests, 1 day' – is planning gatherings across the state in conjunction with the military parade planned for the same day in Washington, D.C.. The group previously held a protest called Hands Off in April, and called for an 'Emergency Protest' in Burlington this past Tuesday which it said had attendance of more than 1,000 people, though the estimate by reporters with ABC22/FOX44 was only around 100. June 14th is the nation's traditional Flag Day. It is also President Donald Trump's birthday. Those near U.S. Route 7 on Saturday may see plenty of American flags in conjunction with the group's 'Flag Relay for Democracy', in which an American flag will be driven all the way across the state from south to north. According to 50501, 'Vermonters will carry this flag to honor the promise of liberty and justice for all—the very ideals generations have fought to protect.' Vermont State Historic Sites will return starting May 16 Those looking for a Saturday afternoon nap may want to reconsider, as the group plans several 'honk and wave' events as the flag makes its way north. Other events include a morning group hike on Mount Philo in Charlotte, and many local protest events. The group's largest planned event is in Burlington, where speakers including Representative Becca Balint, Treasurer Mike Pieciak, activist Mohsen Mahdawi, and feminist Alison Bechdel will appear at Waterfront Park. Judge orders Mohsen Mahdawi's release from federal detention Jennifer Wasiura, who is part of a Middlebury group affiliated with 50501, said, 'We refuse to be intimidated… We will bravely and peacefully stand together.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Post
20-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Palestinian Columbia University protester Mohsen Mahdawi allowed to graduate after being freed from ICE custody
From perp walk to grad walk. Freed Columbia University protester Mohsen Mahdawi was allowed to stride across the graduation stage Monday — just three weeks after being cut loose from an immigration jail. 3 Palestinian Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi walks during the school's graduation ceremony at the School of General Studies in New York City on Monday, May 19, 2025. Anadolu via Getty Images Advertisement The 34-year-old, who was draped in a keffiyeh, paused in the middle of the stage as he listened to some of his fellow grads cheer him on. Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident for 10 years, was nabbed by the feds in Vermont on April 14 during an interview about finalizing his US citizenship. The Trump administration had accused Mahdawi of engaging in 'threatening rhetoric and intimidation' against Jewish students during Columbia's anti-Israel protests. Advertisement He ended up being released by a judge two weeks later — and used his graduation to attack the current administration. 3 Mohsen Mahdawi (L) and Mahmoud Khalil participate in a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, in New York. AP 3 Mahdawi (L) graduated on Monday just three weeks after being cut loose from an immigration jail. Anadolu via Getty Images 'The Trump administration wanted to rob me of this opportunity. They wanted me to be in a prison, in prison clothes, to not have education and to not have joy or celebration,' a defiant Mahdawi said. Advertisement 'It's very mixed emotions.' While the feds haven't accused Mahdawi of committing a crime, they've argued that he and other rabble-rousing students should be deported for beliefs that may undermine US foreign policy. With Post wires
New York Times
20-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
A Plane Crash in Brooklyn Overshadowed Her Childhood
Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll meet a woman who wrote a memoir about how her life was affected by a midair collision over New York Harbor nearly 65 years ago. We'll also find out about graduation day for Mohsen Mahdawi, who led pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University — and was arrested by immigration officers last month. Also, watch your inbox. Coming your way later today will be our limited-edition newsletter, The Sprint for City Hall. It will look at how tensions over the war in Gaza have made their way into the mayor's race and even affected a parade over the weekend. It will also look at how another time-tested political tool, candidates' children, are being deployed as the June 24 primary approaches. Marty Ross-Dolen went to Green-Wood Cemetery to stand by a monument that her grandparents' names are on. The monument is 'hidden back there,' she said. 'You don't know that people even know about it.' She herself didn't know much about why her grandparents' names belonged on the monument until nearly 20 years ago, when she was in her mid-40s and finally read up on something that was almost never talked about when she was growing up: a midair collision over New York Harbor in December 1960. Her grandparents — her mother's mother and father — had been passengers on one of the two planes. 'The plane crash had been a part of my life since I asked my mother where her parents were,' Ross-Dolen said. 'I must have been 4. I knew who they were because there were pictures around the house, and I was named for my grandmother. But my mother raised me in silence. In the 1960s, there was no language for processing grief.' Ross-Dolen, who learned that language on her way to becoming a child psychiatrist and a writer, has processed more than grief in a just-published memoir, 'Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter's Search for Truth' (She Writes Press). It is a very personal account of the aftermath of a disaster that captured attention for a few days. Then the world moved on — for everyone else. Her mother's parents, Garry and Mary Myers, ran the magazine Highlights for Children, which Garry Myers's parents had started after World War II. Ross-Dolen said the trip to New York, with another Highlights executive, had a purpose. Her grandparents wanted to see about getting Highlights for Children on newsstands. They boarded a Trans World Airlines plane in Columbus, Ohio, where they lived and the magazine had its headquarters. New York was little more than 90 minutes away on the propeller-driven Super Constellation, and as it pushed through sleet and fog, air traffic controllers cleared it to descend to 5,000 feet on its way to landing at LaGuardia Airport. A different plane heading toward a different airport was also preparing to land — a United Airlines DC-8, bound for what was then known as Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport). The two aircraft should never have been less than three miles from each other. But the jet, which had transceiver trouble, was not over New Jersey, where the pilots and the air traffic controllers assumed it was. It was already over Staten Island. And then the two dots on the radar screen merged into one. In all, 134 people died — 128 passengers and crew members on the two planes, and 6 people on the ground in Brooklyn, where wreckage from the United plane landed in Park Slope. 'There was one time in high school when I discovered my mother looking at old newspapers,' Ross-Dolen said. 'I didn't inquire. I didn't try to find those articles.' But in 2008, with a little time on her hands, 'I decided to sneak, almost like a kid, and see what had happened.' And by 2008, there was Google, which made her search easier. 'I'm sure I was shaking when I was reading about it,' she said. Then, in 2010, as the 50th anniversary of the accident approached, she and her mother talked about it — to a reporter from The Columbus Dispatch, who had asked to interview her mother. 'We were trying to hold ourselves together,' Ross-Dolen said. 'It became less a mother-daughter thing and more partners in mourning.' In The New York Times's articles about the anniversary, I wrote that it was 'almost a ghost disaster, one without the universally shared imagery of the Titanic or the Hindenburg, one that is, in a strange way, nearly forgotten by those who weren't there or touched directly by it.' Ross-Dolen was touched by it, even though she was born six years after it happened. She began working on her book after the monument was unveiled on the 50th anniversary of the crash. She said that seeing it again last week was 'profound,' because she had a feeling of coming full circle. 'Fourteen years ago, I was standing there with people who had been connected to the story of the accident,' she said. 'This time, I was standing by myself, but I was also putting my story into the world.' Today will be sunny and slightly breezy with a high near 70. Tonight, expect cloudy skies with a low around 55. In effect until Memorial Day. The latest New York news Mohsen Mahdawi, who was detained by ICE, graduates from Columbia He walked across the stage wearing the graduation gown he had ironed himself. He bowed. He held his mortarboard above his head with one hand. He flashed a peace sign with the other. Only then did Mohsen Mahdawi collect his bachelor's degree from Columbia University. My colleague Sharon Otterman writes that it was a moment of happiness for Mahdawi that the Trump administration had tried to prevent. Mahdawi is a green card holder who led pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia and was arrested by immigration officers last month in Vermont. A federal judge ordered him released two weeks later in a setback for the Trump administration's effort to crack down on student demonstrators. Mahmoud Khalil, another Columbia student who was a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the Columbia campus, was supposed to receive his graduate diploma from Columbia this week. But Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was detained in March, remains in a detention center in Louisiana. His wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, spoke an at unofficial alternative graduation ceremony on Sunday at a church on the Upper West Side, saying that graduation was another milestone he had missed since his arrest. He was not allowed to leave the detention center when she gave birth to a son last month. Tosca Dear Diary: We were returning from a vacation in Spain. Our first stop was on West Broadway to retrieve our African gray parrot, Tosca. From there we took a taxi to our Nassau Street home. As we exited the cab in front of our building, we were greeted by the familiar cacophony of horns, sirens and bustling people. My wife spied a fresh fruit cart on the corner near Pace University. 'I'll be right back,' she said as she walked away with Tosca on her shoulder. Suddenly, I heard her yell, 'Tosca, Tosca,' and saw her running down Park Place with people following her and yelling, 'Oscar, Oscar.' A gust of wind had apparently lifted Tosca off her shoulder and was carrying her down the street. She soon landed and began to screech: 'Taxiiii, taxiiiiiii.' 'Is that pigeon calling a taxi?' a woman who appeared somewhat bewildered said. Yes, indeed. We had taught Tosca to say 'taxiii' when she wanted to be carried around our loft. Luckily, my wife reached Tosca before any harm came to her, offered her a finger and then carried her home amid cheers and laughter from those who had gathered to watch. — Penny Bamford Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Ama Sarpomaa and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@ Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
