A United States immigration judge has rejected efforts by US President Donald Trump's administration to deport Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested last year following his participation in anti-Israel protests.
Lawyers for Mahdawi detailed the immigration judge's decision in a court filing on Tuesday with a federal appeals court in New York, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to his release from immigration custody in April.
Chelmsford, Massachusetts-based Immigration Judge Nina Froes wrote in a decision on Friday that the US Department of Homeland Security failed to meet its burden of proving he was removable, which it sought to do using an unauthenticated document signed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
"This decision is an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice," Mahdawi said in a statement.
The administration has the option of challenging the judge's decision before the Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the US Department of Justice.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, in a statement, called the judge an "activist" and said it was a "privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America," one that could be revoked.
Mahdawi was released after two weeks in detention
Mahdawi, born and raised in the West Bank, was arrested in April 2025 upon arriving for an interview for his US citizenship petition. A judge ordered Trump's administration not to deport him from the US or take him out of the state of Vermont.
After two weeks in detention, Mahdawi walked out of the federal courthouse in Burlington, Vermont, after US District Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered that he be released.
In another case, an immigration judge on January 29 terminated removal proceedings the administration initiated against Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was targeted after co-authoring an editorial that criticized her school's response to the Israel-Hamas War.
Last month, a federal judge in Boston ruled that the administration had adopted an unlawful policy of detaining and deporting scholars like Ozturk and Mahdawi that chilled the free speech of non-citizen academics at universities. The Justice Department is appealing that decision.