Supporters hold up signs behind U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont during a rally held by Congress members in support of detained Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi on April 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Mohsen Mahdawi, a pro-Palestinian student activist at Columbia, was released from federal custody Wednesday after a federal judge ruled it was unlawful to keep him detained with no formal charges.

“The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,” said U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford at the hearing on Wednesday. In his decision, he wrote that Mahdawi’s “continued detention would likely have a chilling effect on protected speech.”

The decision marks the first release of a pro-Palestinian student protester arrested amid a crackdown that the Trump administration says is meant to rein in antisemitism on colege campuses. The government’s effort to deport Mahdawi case will continue but he will be free while it proceeds, under the judge’s ruling.

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“I am saying it clear and loud, to President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” Mahdawi said in public comments following his release in Vermont, where he lives and was detained. Wearing a keffiyeh as he emerged from the courthouse, he also said, “To my people in Palestine: I feel your pain, I see your suffering, and I see freedom and it is very very soon.”

Mahdawi’s release came a day after Vermont’s congressional delegation — including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Becca Balint, who are Jewish — rallied on his behalf outside the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C.

Mahdawi was detained by ICE agents earlier this month during an appointment that he had been told was part of the process to become a U.S. citizen. Mahdawi is a permanent resident with a visa who was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank and has been in the United States since 2014.

He was the co-president of Columbia’s Palestinian Students Union and was targeted by the far-right pro-Israel group Betar prior to his detainment. His supporters have argued that he fostered relationships with both Palestinian and Israeli students at Columbia and noted that he receded from prominence in the Columbia protests over time.

Despite no formal charges being made against him, Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified Mahdawi’s detainment in a memo, writing that Mahdawi had undercut efforts to end the war in Gaza. He also accused Mahdawi of “threatening rhetoric and intimidation of pro-Israeli bystanders,” but did not provide evidence, including in a new filing made ahead of Wednesday’s court appearance.

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