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An migration justice has blocked the Trump medication from deporting Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian postgraduate pupil who led protests astatine Columbia University against Israel and the warfare successful Gaza.
In a ruling made nationalist by Mahdawi's attorneys connected Tuesday, the judge, Nina Froes, said she had terminated the lawsuit due to the fact that of a procedural misstep by authorities attorneys, who failed to decently certify an authoritative papers they intended to usage arsenic evidence.
The Trump medication whitethorn entreaty the decision. But the ruling marked the latest setback for the national government's sweeping effort to expel pro-Palestinian field activists and others who expressed disapproval of Israel.
Mahdawi, a ineligible imperishable nonmigratory of the U.S. for the past decade, was arrested by migration agents past April during what helium thought was a citizenship interview. He was released 2 weeks later after an bid from a national judge.
In the months since, the authorities has continued its effort to deport him, citing a memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio arguing noncitizens tin beryllium expelled from the state if their beingness whitethorn undermine U.S. overseas argumentation interests.
Government attorneys submitted a photocopy of the papers to the migration judge, but they failed to certify it arsenic required nether national law, the justice wrote.
"I americium grateful to the tribunal for honoring the regularisation of instrumentality and holding the enactment against the government's attempts to trample connected owed process," Mahdawi said successful a connection released by his attorneys. "This determination is an important measurement towards upholding what fearfulness tried to destroy: the close to talk for bid and justice."
Mahdawi has besides mounted a abstracted lawsuit successful national territory tribunal arguing that helium was unlawfully detained. That lawsuit remains ongoing, his lawyers said.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security who is leaving her station adjacent week, formed Mahdawi arsenic a person of "pro-terrorist riots" whose visa should beryllium revoked successful a connection to The Associated Press.
"No activistic judge, not this 1 oregon immoderate other, is going to halt america from doing that," she added.
The Trump medication has arrested and sought to deport respective planetary students who participated successful pro-Palestinian field protests, accusing them of antisemitism and citing a national instrumentality that lets the caput of authorities artifact visas for radical who could airs "adverse overseas argumentation consequences for the United States." The students person sued the authorities implicit their detention, arguing they are being punished for First Amendment-protected speech.
The authorities has accused Mahdawi of "threatening rhetoric and intimidation of pro-Israeli bystanders" during protests connected Columbia's campus, which helium has denied.
Another Columbia activistic and greenish card-holder, Mahmoud Khalil, was arrested successful March 2025 and is presently fighting a bid to deport him. An migration justice ordered him to beryllium deported successful September, which helium is appealing. On a abstracted track, a U.S. territory tribunal justice freed him from migration detention past summer, a ruling that was overturned by a sheet of appellate judges past month, though Khalil is expected to situation that move.
And past month, a abstracted migration judge blocked the government's effort to deport a Tufts University postgraduate student, Rümeysa Öztürk, implicit an op-ed criticizing the school's effect to the warfare successful Gaza.
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