Mohsen Mahdawi, the Palestinian anti-Israel student protest leader arrested on Monday during a citizenship appointment, should be deported because his activism undercuts efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued in a memo.
The argument contained in the memo, written last month and obtained by the New York Times, adds to the rationales offered by Rubio and other Trump administration officials for why they are seeking to deport non-citizen pro-Palestinian activists.
The memo cited the same Cold War-era law that Rubio used to argue that another Columbia pro-Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil, was eligible for deportation because his campus activities were at odds with US foreign policy about antisemitism. A judge accepted Rubio’s argument after a hearing that Khalil’s lawyers called “charade of due process.”
Mahdawi and Khalil were prominent figures in Columbia’s coalition of anti-Israel protesters, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD),
The group led protests on campus that included harassment of Jewish students, an unauthorized protest encampment, building takeovers, clashes with police and property damage. CUAD has called for the “eradication of western civilization,” distributed Hamas material on campus, backed calls for violence against “Zionists” and said that “violence is the only path.”
The Mahdawi memo, according to the New York Times report, describes another foreign policy goal that Rubio said the protester was undercutting: ending the war in Gaza.
Mohsen Mahdawi, left, and Mahmoud Khalil participate in a pro-Palestinian protest, anti-Israel at Columbia University, October 12, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
President Donald Trump has said he wants the war being fought there between Israel and Hamas to end, and he pressed the sides for a ceasefire and hostage release deal shortly after taking office. That ceasefire ended on March 18, a few days after Rubio reportedly filed the Mahdawi memo, and Israeli officials thanked Trump for permitting their return to fighting.
The memo also accused Mahdawi of engaging in “threatening rhetoric and intimidation of pro-Israeli bystanders,” according to the report, which said the memo did not offer evidence for the claim.
Mahdawi, who was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, spoke out against antisemitic rhetoric at a Columbia rally in November 2023, the Columbia Spectator student newspaper reported at the time. He also denounced antisemitic speech among pro-Palestinian protesters during a December 2023 appearance on “60 Minutes.”
Jewish and Israeli students told Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, that they experienced Mahdawi as a bridge-builder fostering dialogue between student groups on either side of Columbia’s protest movement.
“He talked about Palestinian suffering, but also the importance of understanding Jewish trauma, the Holocaust and the intergenerational toll of violence,” Sahar Bostock, an Israeli doctoral candidate at Columbia, told the newspaper. “He said acknowledge this to have a chance at peace.”
This image taken from a video provided by Christopher Helali shows Mohsen Mahdawi, an anti-Israel protest leader at Columbia University, being detained at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester, Vt., April 14, 2025. (Christopher Helali via AP)
Mahdawi’s lawyers are citing his relationships with both Palestinian and Israeli students in his defense. He also has support from lawmakers in Vermont, where he has been living, including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Becca Balint, who are Jewish.
Hundreds of members of Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist group, rallied for the release of Mahdawi and other student activists Monday outside of an ICE office in New York.
His arrest came after far-right pro-Israel groups lobbied against Mahdawi to authorities. Rubio’s memo is dated just days before Betar, one of the groups, said it had “reason to believe” that Mahdawi was “on the short list of those who will shortly be deported.”
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