Vermont has been thrust to the center of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
On April 14, Mohsen Mahdawi, a student at Columbia University and a legal permanent resident of the U.S. who lives in the Upper Valley of Vermont, traveled to Colchester for his naturalization interview, the final step in becoming an American citizen. Mahdawi was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has lived in the U.S. for a decade and holds a green card.
Mahdawi has been a Palestinian rights activist at Columbia, though he did not participate in the student protest encampment there last spring. He is set to graduate next month. He suspected that his immigration appointment was a “honey trap” meant to lure him out to be deported, as happened to his friend, Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder and a fellow Palestinian student activist at Columbia.
Before traveling to Colchester on Monday, Mahdawi alerted his attorneys, Vermont’s congressional delegation, and journalists in the event that he was arrested. When he showed up for his naturalization interview, he was taken by hooded plainclothes officers who placed him in handcuffs before he could leave the building.
Mahdawi has not been charged with a crime. According to his attorneys, he was detained under an obscure law that permits foreign nationals to be deported if they pose "serious adverse foreign policy consequences." Mahdawi's attorneys argue that he is being punished for protected speech in violation of the First Amendment and his right to due process. In response to an emergency petition filed by Mahdawi's lawyers, Vermont federal Judge William Sessions ordered the Trump administration not to deport him or move him out of the state while he reviews the case.
A CBS News crew interviewed Mahdawi the day before his arrest. He told them, "If my story will become another story for the struggle to have justice and democracy in this country, let it be."
Also on Monday, attorneys for Rümeysa Öztürk, a graduate student at Tufts University, argued before Judge Sessions in Burlington that Öztürk’s arrest on March 25 violated the law. Öztürk, a former Fulbright fellow who is from Turkey and is in the U.S. on a student visa, was grabbed off the street in Somerville, Mass., by masked plainclothes men, a scene that was captured in a now-viral video. She was whisked to Vermont that night before being flown to Louisiana the following morning. A federal judge in Boston ruled that her case should be heard in Vermont. Judge Sessions is now considering the matter.
Öztürk's attorneys assert that the Trump administration secretly revoked her student visa and targeted her for co-writing an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized university leaders for their response to demands that the school divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Both Mahdawi and Öztürk have been targeted by shadowy right wing pro-Israel groups. Mahdawi was named by the militant Zionist organization Betar US, which placed his name on a “deport list” that it gave to the Trump administration.
Öztürk was targeted by Canary Mission, a right-wing group that claims that she “engaged in anti-Israel activism,” an apparent reference to her op-ed piece.
Vermont’s political leaders denounced Mahdawi's arrest. Rep. Becca Balint, and Senators Peter Welch and Bernie Sanders issued a statement saying that Madahwi’s arrest “is immoral, inhumane, and illegal.” They demanded that he “must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.”
Gov. Phil Scott stated, “Law enforcement officers in this country should not operate in the shadows or hide behind masks.”
On Tuesday, Democratic leaders in the Vermont Senate demanded that Vt. Gov Phil Scott terminate an agreement that allows federal immigration authorities to lodge detainees in state prison.
The Vermont Conversation spoke with two attorneys at the center of these cases.
“The larger concern here is one's right to free speech,” said Cyrus Mehta, an immigration attorney based in New York and an adjunct professor of law at Brooklyn Law School. He is part of Mohsen Mahdawi's legal team.
“The Supreme Court has long held … that everyone in the United States, whether they're citizens or non-citizens, including green card holders, have a First Amendment right to free speech. The free speech might not be to your liking. You may not agree with it. But as long as it's lawful, as long as you're not engaging in criminal conduct, that speech should be protected under our First Amendment.”
“It is against the interests of the United States to harshly go against students, treat them like criminals -- even worse than criminals by detaining them, not giving them bond -- and their only offense has been speech that has not particularly been favored by this administration.”
Mehta warned that denying rights to green card holders “will slowly extend to U.S. citizens, we will all lose this cherished First Amendment right to express ourselves.”
Grabbing people off the street by masked plainclothes officers “absolutely bears many of the hallmarks of a kidnapping,” said Lia Ernst, legal director of the ACLU of Vermont, who is on Rümeysa Öztürk's legal team. (Disclosure: I serve on the board of the ACLU of Vermont).
“The notion that the administration — with no due process, with no judicial review — can sneak someone around the country, as happened in our case, and then, as has happened in these other instances, out of the country, and then claim they are powerless to do anything about it, is utterly foreign to the American legal system. It's utterly foreign to the rule of law, and it is abhorrent.”
"It's just horrifying, and I believe intentionally. The government is not trying to just punish Rümeysa for her speech. It's trying to tell everyone else they better only express opinions with which the government agrees. And that cannot be in the United States of America.”
As President Trump and his allies stymie court orders, will the legal system hold?
“I have to believe that it will, but it will not do it on its own,” replied Ernst. She cited the importance of recent protests.
“There is real power in the people standing together and demanding adherence to the rule of law … and to stand up to this administration and to say that its refusal to abide by the constitution and to abide by the rule of law will not be tolerated. But the legal system can't do it by itself.”
