“Come for one, face us all.”
ICE just abducted another Columbia student who spoke out against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
Led to believe he had a scheduled citizenship interview, Mohsen Mahdawi arrived at the U.S. immigration office in Colchester, Vermont on Monday, only to discover ICE agents were there waiting for him. A video shows Mohsen throwing up a peace sign as plainclothes officers, their faces covered, lead him away in handcuffs.
Mohsen is one of nine Columbia students to be targeted for deportation in retaliation for exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech.
Desperate to crush popular and growing opposition to Israel’s genocide, the Trump regime is shredding our First Amendment rights.
But we’re not backing down. Shortly after Mohsen was arrested, over a thousand Jews and allies gathered for an emergency Passover seder outside ICE headquarters in NYC to demand his and other student activists’ release.
Our message is clear: “Come for one, face us all.”
Why was Mohsen targeted?
Mohsen is a Palestinian activist and undergraduate Columbia student who was set to complete his degree next month. Like Mahmoud Khalil, he was a student leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment on Columbia’s campus. Mohsen is also a U.S. green card holder and has lived in the United States for the last decade.
Shaken by the abduction last month of his friend and peer Mahmoud Khalil — also a green card holder — Mohsen reached out to Columbia to ask that they help him move to a safer location. Columbia did nothing. So for weeks following Mahmoud’s disappearance, Mohsen did not leave his home, fearful that ICE was hunting him, too.
That was until he received a notification from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), telling him that he had a citizenship interview scheduled on Monday, April 14. He was arrested upon his arrival.
The Trump regime is trying to deport Mohsen to the Occupied West Bank, where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military and Jewish settlers in the year and a half since the genocide in Gaza began — including two of Mohsen’s cousins.
In doing so, the Trump regime is invoking a little-known 1952 law, the same controversial provision they used to target Mahmoud Khalil. The law allows for the U.S. government to deport even green card holders like Mahmoud and Mohsen, should the Secretary of State determine that they pose “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” In this case, Secretary Rubio has claimed that Mohsen and Mahmoud’s presence in the United States threatens the administration’s foreign policy to combat antisemitism.
What’s happening in Mahmoud Khalil’s case?
Last Friday, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that the U.S. government does have grounds to deport Mahmoud — even though the government’s only evidence against him is a two-page memo in which Secretary Rubio himself admits that Mahmoud has committed no crime.
But one of the lawyers representing Mahmoud says that outcome wasn’t a surprise.
According to Diala Shamas, the Trump regime hopes to expedite Mahmoud’s case in immigration court, where “judges are much more at the mercy of the executive branch” — allowing them to circumvent federal review entirely. That’s why Mahmoud’s lawyers are moving urgently on his separate, federal court case in New Jersey, where they’ve filed motions asking to release Mahmoud from ICE custody and challenging the legality of his detention.
Ultimately, the Trump regime is desperate to silence Mahmoud, Mohsen, and other students like them because they know that increasingly, the people are on their side.
“His views, the reasons he’s being retaliated against, the reason the Trump administration wants to silence him and many others like him is because they are widely held,” Shamas said. “This is fundamentally because they are afraid of this very popular political movement here in the United States.”
‘Where are we supposed to go?’
Two days after an immigration judge ruled on Mahmoud’s case, the Israeli military bombed the largest functioning hospital in North Gaza — again.
Jolted awake by the sounds of screams, critically wounded patients who were receiving treatment inside tent wards described having only minutes to flee with their families before Al-Ahli hospital was struck by two missiles. Left with nowhere to go, a 12-year-old boy on oxygen and two others died while trying to make it on foot to a nearby facility. That boy is one of at least 500 Palestinian children to be killed by Israel since it unilaterally shattered the ceasefire agreement in March.
“They bomb our homes over our heads and then bomb hospitals while patients and the wounded are inside. Where are we supposed to go?
-Yousef Abu Sakran, who fled al-Ahli with his wife and critically-injured 5-year-old son, Mohammad
For the last year and a half, Palestinians have livestreamed the genocide being carried out against them in Gaza, and Americans have watched horror after horror unfold on our cellphone screens: images of entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble, of hospital patients burned alive in their beds, of families massacred while queuing for aid.
At the same time, our movements have refused to let up for even a minute. We have organized Jews in cities and towns across the country in solidarity with Palestinians, keeping Palestine in the headlines and refuting the outlandish claim that Israel’s campaign of mass slaughter has anything to do with protecting Jews.
Now, more Americans than ever before are questioning or already oppose sending more U.S. weapons to Israel. It is in this context that we should understand the Trump regime’s crackdown on pro-Palestine activism.
Intent on maintaining the status quo of unquestioning U.S. support for Israel — and well aware of the power our movements have to shift popular opinion — the Trump regime and anti-Palestinian lobby groups are resorting to fear tactics in a desperate bid to silence us.
‘Come for one, face us all’
Because we are not backing down.
On the third evening of Passover, over a thousand Jews and allies gathered for an emergency seder outside ICE headquarters in New York City, to demand an end to Israel’s genocide and to call for the release of Mahmoud, Mohsen, and all student activists imprisoned for defending Palestinian rights.
Clad in red t-shirts bearing the message, “Not in our name” and “Stop arming Israel,” protesters chanted, prayed, and held signs and banners that read “Exodus from Zionism,” “Opposing Pharaohs is a Jewish tradition,” and “None of us are free until all of us are free.”
As conditions on the ground in Palestine grow more dire, and as the Trump regime grows more desperate to quash opposition to U.S. and Israeli atrocities, we are refusing to back down and refusing to succumb to despair.
Tell Congress: Act now to secure the release of Mahmoud, Mohsen, and all other imprisoned student activists.
Use the action tools provided by our sister organization to keep up the pressure on our elected officials to demand the release of student activists imprisoned for defending Palestinian rights.
Email your Senators: Let them hear from you on their votes to block bombs to Israel.
Earlier this month, only 15 Senators voted against Trump’s illegal $8.8 billion weapons sales to Israel.
In the aftermath of this vote, it’s crucial that the Senate hears from us. Use the action tool provided by our sister organization, JVP Action, to contact your Senators now, either to express your outrage or your thanks for their stance against genocide.
What we’re reading: On the ground in Gaza
Ruwaida Amer reports for +972 Magazine about the thousands of displaced Palestinians sheltering inside Gaza’s Islamic University, where they are forced to burn books to stay warm.
Huda Skaik writes for The Intercept. “In Gaza, everything changes in an instant: Gazans get killed or injured in an instant, buildings get demolished in an instant, prices get higher in an instant, and the border crossings get closed in an instant.”
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