Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. There have been so many immigration, detention, and deportation stories this year, raising multiple legal and constitutional questions. We will talk now with the subject of one of the biggest. Mohsen Mahdawi was a Columbia University senior and a legal permanent resident of the United States when he was detained by ICE early this year. Originally from the West Bank, Mahdawi co-founded the Palestinian Student Union at Colombia. He was a leader in the pro-Palestinian protests at the school. He was also president of the Columbia University Buddhist Association. Mahdawi was detained in April when he showed up as scheduled to take his citizenship exam. Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself published an alleged reason they wanted to deport Mahdawi. Rubio said, "The activities and presence of Mahdawi in the United States undermines US policy to combat antisemitism," and that Mahdawi's involvement in the Colombia protest could "potentially undermine the peace process underway in the Middle East."

The grounds for his detention, as claimed by the government, were based on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The act says, "An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potential serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable." That's the central quote from that law that they were citing. Mahdawi went to federal court seeking to be released in a case now known as Mahdawi versus Trump. The court did release him in time to attend graduation at Columbia in May. The student newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, says he got a standing ovation from his graduating classmates.

The status of Mohsen Mahdawi's case right now is apparently this. The district court judge, Jeffrey Crawford, who released him on bail, compared his detention to the Red Scare of the McCarthy era. His ruling said Mahdawi had provided enough evidence that his First Amendment political speech was violated, and that it might have been done as an act of retaliation for participation in the protests, that at least he should be out on bail as his deportation case proceeds. The government is now contesting that the district court even had the jurisdiction to release Mahdawi on bail because his case should only be heard by immigrants courts, they say.

That may sound like a wonky bureaucratic difference, this court versus that court, but it's actually important to the story because it's part of a pattern of the Trump administration arguing that their actions on deportation cannot even be reviewed by the courts. Now, the appeals court has yet to rule in Mahdawi versus Trump on whether the government can send him back to detention while his deportation case proceeds. Mohsen Mahdawi joins me now, along with an attorney in his case, Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. If we can go by first names. Mohsen and Nathan, thank you for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Nathan Freed Wessler: Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Good morning, Brian. Good morning to you as you--

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Sorry for cutting you off. Thought you were done saying hello. Nathan, let me actually start with you and your role as attorney since I just laid out some of the legal history. First, correct me if I got any of the facts wrong, and then tell me what's at stake if the ruling goes against Mohsen. Will they be able to put him right back in detention without accusing him of any kind of crime?

Nathan Freed Wessler: That's exactly what they want to do. Your recap was exactly right. The stakes in this case, you can't overstate how important they are. The power that the government is claiming is that it can grab any non-citizen off the street and lock them up basically indefinitely while it tries to deport them in retaliation for that person's First Amendment-protected speech.

There are two cases going on in parallel for Mohsen. There's the immigration case where the government is trying to deport him in retaliation for his peaceful, lawful, constitutionally protected speech. Then there's what's called the habeas case, which is the one you were describing, where Mohsen, working with our team of lawyers, is challenging the government's ability to keep him locked up in immigration detention during the course of that immigration case. Those cases can go on for many months at a minimum, and often for years.

The government's argument is you can't challenge the constitutional violations of locking you up in retaliation for your peaceful, protected speech until the end of the immigration process, maybe years later. What's at stake here is the court's ability to do what courts are supposed to do, to intervene when there's a constitutional violation and order somebody released while the rest of their case goes on. That's what the district court did for Mohsen here and what courts have done in the cases of other non-citizen students who have been grabbed and locked up by the government only because the government disagrees with their peaceful speech.

Brian Lehrer: How do you understand their underlying claim? This very rarely used provision of a McCarthy-era law that says Mohsin, despite being a green card holder, could be deported as "an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States." Quoting from the law. How are they saying that a college student leading a campus protest could have that kind of power, and where would that fit into the historical application of that law?

Nathan Freed Wessler: Their claim is just patently ridiculous, both as a factual matter and as a legal matter. It's flummoxing in some way why they would choose to pick on Mohsen, who by every account was engaged in peaceful, respectful dialogue and protest and speech among his fellow students at Columbia. This is somebody who, as you're going to hear directly from him in a moment, has committed his life to peaceful advocacy and dialogue.

It doesn't pass the smell test to assert that somehow that advocacy, that protest, that dialogue is having some kind of detrimental effect on US foreign policy. That's just ridiculous. If you step back for a minute, what the government is trying to do here is literally unprecedented. The law that the government is claiming to rely on is about 35 years old. In another case of a non-citizen student--

Brian Lehrer: Did I cite incorrectly that it was from the 1952 Immigration Act?

Nathan Freed Wessler: There have been similar provisions that have run through, but this particular statute is actually newer. It's about 35 years old. In one of the other cases, the Mahmoud Khalil's case, which is very similar, the government again retaliating against a noncitizen student just because the government disagrees with that person's speech about Palestine and Israel, a court actually ordered the government to come produce all the other examples of cases where it has used this law in the past. The government could only find five times it had used this in that entire 35-year history up until this year, the Trump administration.

A group of independent immigration scholars searched more than 11 million cases from that same period. They found an extra 10, so 15 cases in 35 years before this year. In none of those was the government going after a lawful permanent resident like Mohsen, and in none of them was it targeting someone just for their constitutionally protected speech. This provision is made for the way it's actually been used before this year, which is to go after people like leaders of foreign paramilitaries, or people charged or convicted of serious crimes in foreign countries where there might be some foreign policy equity to deal with.

What we have here is the government using it in an unprecedented way that just violates the First Amendment. First Amendment, of course, is the part of our Constitution that protects our freedom of speech, that says the government cannot pick and choose speech it agrees with and disagrees with and then punish people because some government official disagrees with what they're saying. That's the core of what the First Amendment doesn't allow. That's exactly what the government is doing here by weaponizing this law that basically was unused except for some rare cases that had nothing to do with pure speech, that had everything to do with other kinds of criminal conduct.

Brian Lehrer: Just as an example or two examples of how that law has actually been applied in the past, The Washington Post had a story where they were able to identify two people by name deported in past uses of that law in the '90s. One was wanted as an indicted conspirator to commit terrorist acts in Jordan, the other against a Mexican national from a very prominent political family there, who had been indicted in Mexico, and the Mexican government was seeking extradition. Very high-profile and criminally charged people in their home countries of origin, so different from Mohsen and the other students being targeted here.

Mohsen, thank you for your patience while we heard from your lawyer. Would you tell our listeners a little bit of your story of going for your citizenship test back in April, keeping that appointment? I gather you were actually afraid that they would detain you at that time. Can you describe first what that day was like for you and what you were told about why you were being detained?

Mohsen Mahdawi: Thank you, Brian, for this opportunity. Good morning to you and to your audience. This was on April 14th of 2025, a long-awaited interview for my citizenship. Now, the background of it is I've been in this country for about 11 years. I came to this country legally. I went through multiple background checks at different stages. I've been a green card holder for the past 10 years. I've worked in this country, paid taxes, I studied at the best institutions of this country, and I've never committed a crime. I've respected the law of this country. After roughly 11 years of being in this country, I applied for a citizenship, and I received my invitation. It was on the day of April 14th.

Prior to that, I had suspicions because I saw other students, Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, who were already detained by that time. They were detained in March, I believe. I had suspicions that this might be a trap. Based on that, I prepared with my legal team, I prepared with the representatives in Vermont, and I informed my community in Vermont. I went to this citizenship not knowing, actually-- It's very ironic and a painful reality, I would imagine, for many Americans who believe in the system, and in democracy, and in the due process. I went there not knowing if I will walk out as a citizen with rights or if I would walk out handcuffed and put in prison.

The unfortunate reality, that after I did my citizenship interview, and by the end of it, the officer who was interviewing me asked me if I would be willing to take the oath to protect and defend the Constitution of this country, and my answer was absolutely. Within seconds from saying that, agents from the Department of Homeland Security basically entered the room. They were masked, they were armed, and they told me that I am under arrest without any further explanation. I gave them my hands, and I say, "I am a peaceful man. I will not resist."

They walk me out of that interview handcuffed from the most important stage for me here in the United States, a place where I call home, since I've never had actually a home. I was born and raised in a refugee camp in Palestine. That is what happened during my citizenship interview. I was taken into prison. I was lucky to not be transferred to Louisiana. They wanted to transfer me there. If that was the case, I would have been most likely in that detention center for months. I was released after spending 16 days in a Vermont prison, as you mentioned, with a decision from Judge Crawford, who saw this as a clear attack on the Constitution and on the First Amendment.

Brian Lehrer: I read that you co-founded the Palestinian Student Union at Columbia, and you were president of the Columbia Buddhist Association. Both true?

Mohsen Mahdawi: Both are true, yes.

Brian Lehrer: How do you feel that your Buddhism informs your activism for Palestinian rights, if it does? Because, to be blunt, a lot of listeners probably assume that if you're Palestinian from the West Bank, you're probably a Muslim or perhaps a Christian, but they wouldn't think Buddhist. Where did that come from for you, and how, if it does, does it inform your activism?

Mohsen Mahdawi: Thank you for the question, Brian. Buddhism emerged into my life when I came to the United States. I was raised as a Muslim. I have not renounced Islam, just for people to understand. The life that I lived in the refugee camp was a very traumatizing, painful life. I grew up there as a child, as a third-generation. When the second intifada, or the uprising, started, I was 10 years old. I've witnessed serious levels of trauma. I saw my best friend getting killed in front of my eyes on the hands of an Israeli soldier. My uncle was assassinated, killed when I was 11 years old, my two cousins. I was shot when I was 15 years.

When I came to America, one of the most important and most transformative practices that I discovered was meditation. In fact, I learned how to meditate at Universalist Church in Vermont in Hartland. I found the practice of meditation very powerful to regulate my emotions, to be able to process my pain in a healthy way, and to be able to develop a level of empathy and compassion. Through that journey started with meditation, I started learning more and more about Buddhism, and I developed my curiosity until I came to Columbia University. That's where I was nominated to lead the Buddhist association, which I led for two years and continued to be an advisor for it for the years after.

The Buddhist practice has deepened my belief and faith not only in humanity, but also in peaceful resolution, in manifesting and seeing a peaceful resolution. A big part of that comes from the dedication that the practice has to alleviate all suffering in the world, the liberation of suffering. Big part of that as well comes from the idea that we are not separated as humans. The understanding that an oppressed and an oppressor, both of them, you have to develop a level of empathy and to understand the root causes of an issue is what strengthens my non-violent practice and beliefs for the liberation of the Palestinian people.

Brian Lehrer: I read a quote of you in The Guardian from just after your release from detention, where you said to some people at that time, "For anybody who is doubting justice, this is a light of hope-" meaning your lease, "-and faith in the justice system in America. We are witnessing the fight for justice in America, which means a true democracy, and the fight for justice for Palestinians, which means that both liberations are interconnected because no one of us is free unless we all are." How do you see both things, what's going on in this country and what's going on in the Israel Palestine dispute, as interconnected, as you put it?

Mohsen Mahdawi: The fundamental part of it, Brian, is civil rights. The issue that is happening in this country on a fundamental level is related to equal rights for everyone. This process, we see the progress of it over the years, the civil rights in the United States. Then we saw also the uprising related to Black Life matters, and the MeToo movement, and also for LGBTQ. We saw also the uprising related to the anti-Vietnam War, seeing Vietnamese as human beings who deserve to have rights and wanting to end the wars. Similarly with the anti apartheid movement in South Africa.

The understanding that there is a level of supremacy, and supremacy is what gives certain people rights and deny others their rights. In fact, if we look at human rights, the establishment of human rights and the Declaration on Human Rights has been actually established and issued by major leaders from the United States, including Eleanor Roosevelt, who contributed to it. Now what's happening in Palestine is on a fundamental level related to people's rights. Where I was raised, where my family is right now in the West Bank, it's an apartheid system where Palestinians don't have equal rights to Israeli Jews.

What's happening in Gaza, it's also a degradation to human rights. The genocide that has killed more than 70,000 people and destroyed many different elements of life, it is also related to seeing Palestinians less worthy of rights. Democracy requires to have equal rights for everyone. We see the government here, the Trump's administration, going against this democracy and degradating the rights of certain groups. This is Project 2025. What the Israeli government is doing in the West Bank and Gaza is not much far. They are cut from the same clothes.

Brian Lehrer: We, of course, will stipulate that some of our listeners and some other people will disagree with some of your characterizations of what's going on in the Middle East. The word genocide is always controversial, just to acknowledge that. The larger push on the right regarding immigration includes the idea that people allowed to stay here permanently should, in some way, love this country.

They are wary of people who come as immigrants by choice, out of all the countries in the world that come here and then become very active in protesting against the US government. Like they say, why do you want to be here, and why should Americans want you here if that's the arc of your relationship with this country? We hear that a lot. What would you say to those people?

Mohsen Mahdawi: Thank you for bringing up the characterization about genocide. When I say that, I'm relying on human rights organizations, I'm relying on the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, and I am relying on major American leaders and figures, including Brad Landers, who recently declared that this is the situation and he spoke about it, and Bernie Sanders, and many others. I have a rabbi friend who said, "Call it war crimes, call it genocide. It is actually the killing of so many."

In terms of America. I actually have so much love for America. This is the reason why I wanted to become a citizen of this country. I have so much love for the American people who showed me what humanity is, the American people who lent me a hand, helped me with my school applications, mentored me, healed me, trauma therapists. Americans healed me, welcomed me at their home in Vermont, the Vermonters who consider me a Vermonter as well. America is the first place where I have experienced freedom in my life. Before that, freedom was just a concept for me.

I dreamt of freedom, I sang for freedom, I chanted for freedom, but I've never experienced what freedom is until I came to this country. The freedom of movement with no checkpoints. The freedom of sleeping in my house without worrying that soldiers would break in and blast the door. The freedom of feeling safe to take a hike in the forest. The freedom of being able to speak my mind. That used to be, which now is under attack. How could I not be thankful and grateful for all of those? That's the main reason I wanted to become an American citizen, because I believe in the core values and principles of this country and what it promises to deliver.

Brian Lehrer: Students who have been supportive of you have said you've been a protester, yes, a protest leader, yes, but also a bridge builder between students concerned with Palestinian rights and concerned with antisemitism, that those things are not mutually exclusive. I guess the government would have to try to produce evidence to the contrary if they're going to seek to have you deported on the foreign policy grounds that they're claiming and the antisemitism grounds that they're claiming.

I see that you were going to continue at Columbia as a graduate student in conflict resolution, but if I have it correctly, now not under these circumstances. As someone interested in conflict resolution, what's your hope for what happens between Israel and Palestine? You're obviously very critical of Israel. Is a two-state solution something you could endorse with the right details, or for you, only a single state with no ethnic or religious hierarchy, as Mayor-elect Mamdani has described it?

Mohsen Mahdawi: Any solution that has to take place should not compromise on the dignity, on the safety, and the freedom of the people who live there. This is as a first step. We have to see people as equal, whether if they are Jews, Muslims, Christians, or non-believers. This is the same value that I deeply appreciate about this country, the democracy that gives everyone the same rights in theory. In relation to the Palestinian-Israeli situation, I believe that a peaceful resolution is very possible. We have to break through certain barriers, to start with the barrier of systematic discrimination, which is evident for me. It's my life experience, and it's being documented now.

The barrier of segregation between Palestinians and Israelis, the system that manipulates fear and use Israelis and Palestinians in order to fight each other, and also the system that prevents people from having an access to information. That's when I say the human being is not the enemy. If there is an enemy, it is fear, it is segregation, and it's ignorance. If there is an enemy, it's the system that weaponize certain people and capitalize on the trauma that happened to the Jewish people to use the same Israeli Jews to suppress Palestinian rights.

Again, the fundamentals is to have equal rights for everyone, where people can live in safety. That can manifest in one state or two state as a temporary solution. I don't think the two states would fundamentally resolve the issue because there is another big piece of the puzzle that has to be considered. First is the right of return for refugees. The right of return could mean many things, but could mean a return, could mean also reparation, and basically reparation and reimbursement for the loss.

The second part is that there is aspiration for both Palestinian and Israelis to have a freedom to move between the river and the sea. Yes, a two-state solution which has a majority of international agreement and support right now, there is a possibility to make it work for a certain amount of time. Then there has to be a transition where the whole place and the whole land will be open for everybody, regardless of their religion, and that it would offer safety and freedom for those people.

Brian Lehrer: Nathan, back to you for a last question. As lawyer for Mohsen and the ACLU. The case that is most current is this question of whether the district court had jurisdiction to order his release on bail, but I gather there is a separate immigration court proceeding, that's the deportation proceeding. If I have that right, and in our last half-minute or so, how will Mohsen's immigration status be resolved? Would the State Department have to prove he could actually impede foreign policy, which is their claim?

Nathan Freed Wessler: Their position is that they just have to assert that, they don't even have to prove it. Of course, what we say is that that is just a gross violation of the First Amendment. I just want to point out what's happening here. We have somebody who's engaging in a thoughtful debate about an issue that many people will disagree with Mohsen about, and many will agree, but that enriches our civic life. That means that we can have these nuanced debates about what's happening in the US and what's happening around the world, and the government wants to cut that off.

They would have the same power to cut off a Ukrainian immigrant who wants to speak out about Russia, or a non-citizen economics professor who's critical of tariffs. The implications of the government's position are really stunning. The Constitution doesn't let them do that. We look forward to making that point in immigration court and in the federal habeas case.

Brian Lehrer: We will see what happens. Mohsen and Nathan, thank you both very much for joining us. We appreciate your time.

Nathan Freed Wessler: Thank you.

Mohsen Mahdawi: My pleasure. Thank you.

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