{"id":17698,"date":"2025-05-09T18:59:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T18:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17698"},"modified":"2025-05-09T18:59:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T18:59:19","slug":"court-frees-palestinian-student-arrested-by-ice-at-his-u-s-citizenship-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17698","title":{"rendered":"Court Frees Palestinian Student Arrested by ICE at His U.S. Citizenship Hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;The arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi was a test of just how far President Donald Trump&#8217;s power over immigrants could go. Mahdawi, a ten-year legal U.S. resident and a student at Columbia University, was at his interview to become a U.S. citizen earlier this month. But because he wasn&#8217;t a citizen&nbsp;<em>yet<\/em>, the Trump administration argued that it&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/15\/nyregion\/rubio-mahdawi-deportation-letter.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">could deport<\/a>&nbsp;Mahdawi for his protest activity, and had Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pick him up at the immigration center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Wednesday, however, a federal judge ordered ICE to free Mahdawi, who was born in a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/04\/15\/ice-arrests-palestinian-immigrant-at-his-citizenship-test\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">refugee camp<\/a>&nbsp;in the Palestinian territories, while his case proceeded. &#8220;The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,&#8221; U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford said at the hearing, according to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/lawyers-columbia-student-detained-ice-seek-release-case\/story?id=121317902\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ABC News<\/a>. &#8220;Mr. Mahdawi, I will order you released.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;&#8221;Noncitizen residents like Mr. Mahdawi enjoy First Amendment rights in this country to the same extent as United States Citizens,&#8221; he emphasized. &#8220;If the Government detained Mr. Mahdawi as punishment for his speech, that purpose is not legitimate, regardless of any alleged First Amendment violation. Immigration detention cannot be motivated by a punitive purpose. Nor can it be motivated by the desire to deter others from speaking.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/04\/30\/court-frees-palestinian-student-arrested-by-ice-at-his-u-s-citizenship-hearing\">https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/04\/30\/court-frees-palestinian-student-arrested-by-ice-at-his-u-s-citizenship-hearing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi was a test of just how far President Donald Trump&#8217;s power over immigrants could go. Mahdawi, a ten-year legal U.S. resident and a student at Columbia University, was at his interview to become a U.S. citizen earlier this month. But because he wasn&#8217;t a citizen yet, the Trump administration argued that it could deport Mahdawi for his protest activity, and had Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pick him up at the immigration center.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, however, a federal judge ordered ICE to free Mahdawi, who was born in a refugee camp in the Palestinian territories, while his case proceeded. &#8220;The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,&#8221; U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford said at the hearing, according to ABC News. &#8220;Mr. Mahdawi, I will order you released.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8221;Noncitizen residents like Mr. Mahdawi enjoy First Amendment rights in this country to the same extent as United States Citizens,&#8221; he emphasized. &#8220;If the Government detained Mr. Mahdawi as punishment for his speech, that purpose is not legitimate, regardless of any alleged First Amendment violation. Immigration detention cannot be motivated by a punitive purpose. Nor can it be motivated by the desire to deter others from speaking.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/04\/30\/court-frees-palestinian-student-arrested-by-ice-at-his-u-s-citizenship-hearing\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[552,1736,272,355,875,848,1302,1301,844,26,493,25,194,391,389,1584,108,115,158],"class_list":["post-17698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-conflict","tag-first-amendment","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-foreign-policy","tag-free-speech","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-ice","tag-illegal-immigration","tag-immigrants","tag-immigration","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-speech","tag-terrorism","tag-terrorists","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17699,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17698\/revisions\/17699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}