Released Palestinian student helps launch immigrant legal aid initiative in Vermont
Immigration
The Middle East
Israel-Hamas war
Student lifeFacebookTweetLink
Follow
A Palestinian student arrested during an interview about finalizing his U.S. citizenship helped launch a $1 million fundraising campaign to strengthen the legal safety net for immigrants in Vermont on Thursday, a week after a federal judge freed him from custody.
Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, who led protests against Israel's war in Gaza at Columbia University, spent 16 days in a state prison before a judge ordered him released on April 30. The Trump administration has said Mahdawi should be deported because his activism threatens its foreign policy goals, but the judge ruled that he has raised a 'substantial claim' that the government arrested him to stifle speech with which it disagrees.
Immigration authorities have detained college students from around the country since the first days of the Trump administration. Many of them participated in campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Mahdawi was among the first to win his freedom after challenging his arrest.
'This is a message of hope and light, that our humanity is much larger than what divides us. Our humanity is much larger than unjust laws,' he said at a Statehouse news conference. 'And this is also a message to the rest of the world. It starts from Vermont.'
Mahdawi joined Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak, Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale and community advocates to announce the Vermont Immigration Legal Defense Fund. The group, which also includes lawyers and philanthropists, says the fund will be used to expand the legal team at the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, train pro bono attorneys and partner with community groups to support those facing deportation, detention and family separation.
'I am here with a large and diverse group of Vermonters to say: We protect and take care of our people, regardless of their national origin, regardless of their immigration status, regardless of the language they speak,' Ram Hinsdale said. 'We take care of our own against any and all threats.'
Members of Vermont's congressional delegation have spoken up on Mahdawi's behalf, as have state politicians. Vermont's House and Senate passed resolutions condemning the circumstances of his detention and advocating for his release and due process rights.
Republican Gov. Phil Scott has said there is no justification for the manner in which Mahdawi was arrested, at an immigration office in Colchester.
'Law enforcement officers in this country should not operate in the shadows or hide behind masks,' the governor said the next day. 'The power of the executive branch of the federal government is immense, but it is not infinite, and it is not absolute.'
Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident, was born in a refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and moved to the United States in 2014. At Columbia, he organized campus protests and co-founded the Palestinian Student Union with Mahmoud Khalil, another Palestinian permanent resident of the U.S. and graduate student who was arrested in March.
His release, which is being challenged by the government, allows him to travel outside of his home state of Vermont and attend his graduation from Columbia in New York later this month.
On Thursday, he described sharing a prison cell with a farmer from Mexico who prayed every night.
'I think his prayers have been answered today by this initiative,' he said. 'This is what I call love and care. This is what I call humanity and justice. This is what I call the teachings of Jesus, who would feed the hungry, who would shelter the homeless and who would provide support to illegal immigrants.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
15 minutes ago
- Fox News
Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' cracks down on Biden's student loan 'scheme,' top Republican says
The chairman of a key Senate panel is claiming victory against former President Joe Biden's student loan plans as part of President Donald Trump's "one big, beautiful bill." "The Biden administration was attempting to forgive student loans for people who willingly took on the loan and required the taxpayer, including people who never went to college and would never make what the person who took the loan would ever have the hope to make," Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., told Fox News Digital. "So we end that transfer of that student loan on the taxpayers, and that's probably our biggest savings." Cassidy's committee released its portion of the Trump agenda bill late on Tuesday. A press release for the legislation said it "ends Biden's student loan schemes that transfer debt onto the 87 percent of Americans who chose to not go to college or already paid off their loans" and "also prevents future Democrat administrations from implementing schemes." The bill specifically takes aim at Biden's expansion of Borrower Defense to Repayment regulations and Closed School Discharge regulations, which Republicans have held up as costly policies that shift federal student loan borrowers' burdens onto other taxpayers. Various versions of Biden's plans had previously been struck down in court. The bill would also eliminate federal Grad PLUS loans, a program used by graduate-level and professional students to pay for their studies, which can be used for graduate students' entire cost of attendance. It would instead keep in place a $20,500 annual limit for Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loans on graduate degrees, capped at $100,000 total, excluding undergraduate loans. For professional degrees, it keeps a $50,000 annual unsubsidized loan limit and a $200,000 total cap. The legislation is also aimed at cracking down on taxpayer funding subsidizing degrees from lower-performing universities. Colleges that see people with undergraduate degrees earn less than the typical high school graduate in their state, or graduate programs where attendees then earn less than the normal bachelor's recipient, would be blocked from federal student loan programs. "What we've got was a situation where people can borrow more money than they can effectively pay back, and that destroys their life, leaving them with a debt burden which keeps them unable to do other things in life. And there's at least some sense that universities offering these programs know that's the case. And so we attempt to fix that," Cassidy said. "So we have provisions that would say that if the degree being acquired does not end up paying more, the person receiving that degree doesn't get more on average than a person who did not get that degree, then the federal government is not going to lend them money." To encourage more people to pursue non-collegiate degrees, the bill would also establish a Workforce Pell Grant. Pell Grants are currently aimed at low-income students pursuing bachelor's degrees and are generally not repaid. "For example, a student gets a commercial driver's license. They're going to go out and make $100,000 a year after a couple of years of driving, I am told. And so we want to enable those people to accomplish that," Cassidy said. Foreign income would be taken into account when evaluating Pell Grants, while farm and small business assets would not, under the GOP bill. Those and several other measures in the legislation would add up to roughly $300 billion in taxpayer savings, Cassidy said. Senate Republicans are currently working through their version of Trump's massive agenda bill, which passed the House late last month. Republicans are using the budget reconciliation process to pass a sweeping bill advancing Trump's agenda on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt. They are also working to use it to bring down the national debt – nearing $37 trillion – with the aim of cutting $1.5 trillion in federal spending. Reconciliation allows the party in power to completely skirt the minority, in this case Democrats, by lowering the Senate's threshold to advance from 60 votes to 51. The legislation must adhere to a specific set of rules, however, including measures that deal with the budget, taxation, or the national debt. Both the House and Senate must agree to identical versions of the bill before it gets to Trump's desk for a signature. The House's version passed 215 to 214, and leaders there have implored the upper chamber to change as little as possible. Cassidy acknowledged there were some changes made but was optimistic about how they'll be met in the House. "There's several things, but one thing I think that they're going to like is that we do fully fund the Pell Grant program. You know, we address the shortfall there. And so I think they're going to like it," he said. "It's going to give low-income students access to career education. We need those kind of career type jobs to make sure that all this manufacturing and construction has a workforce to address it. And so we think it helps the needs of society. We think it helps the needs of the student." House and Senate GOP leaders had previously set a goal of having a bill on Trump's desk by the Fourth of July. Cassidy declined to comment on whether that was a feasible benchmark but argued that lawmakers should be ready to extend that timeline – and possibly shrink their summer recess – to get the final product. "As far as I'm concerned, the most important thing is to get it right. So if there is a delay, the president said it today – if there is a delay, that's not that big of a deal. The most important thing is we get it right," he said.
CBS News
15 minutes ago
- CBS News
Kosovo agrees to accept U.S. deportations of migrants from other countries
The European country of Kosovo has agreed to a Trump administration request to allow the U.S. to deport a small group of migrants to the landlocked Balkan nation who are not from there, U.S. and Kosovar officials told CBS News. Officials in Kosovo, Europe's youngest country, agreed to host 50 deportees from other countries, the latest agreement in a broader and aggressive effort by the Trump administration to convince countries around the world to accept migrants who are not their citizens. In a statement to CBS News, Kosovo's embassy in the U.S. confirmed the deportation agreement. "In response to the request from the United States regarding the reception and relocation of third-country nationals, we have expressed our willingness to cooperate with the United States in addressing this matter under established conditions," the embassy said. Kosovo's embassy said the deal would allow 50 deportees from other nations to be "temporarily relocated" to Kosovo, while officials there work to facilitate "their safe return to their home country." It's unclear who exactly could be sent by the U.S. to Kosovo or which countries they would be from. Typically, the U.S. uses third country deportation agreements to deport migrants whose home countries won't take them back, in some cases because of strained diplomatic relations. Kosovo's embassy said the government in Pristina would seek "the opportunity to select individuals from a proposed pool, provided they meet specific criteria related to the rule of law and public order." In a statement to CBS News, the U.S. State Department said, "We welcome cooperation on this key Trump Administration priority." "We are grateful to our partner Kosovo for receiving third country nationals removed from the United States and facilitating those aliens' safe return to their home countries," the State Department added. Formerly part of Yugoslavia, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008. The country is recognized by more than 100 nations, including the U.S. But other nations do not recognize its independence, including Serbia, which considers Kosovo one of its regions. Kosovo considers the U.S. one of its strongest allies on the international stage. After the chaotic American military withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, Kosovo agreed to host Afghan evacuees who required extra vetting due to security flags. Since President Trump began his second term and launched a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, the U.S. government has approached nations in Asia, Africa, Latin America and other parts of the world, seeking deportation deals. The second Trump administration has already deported several hundred Asian and African migrants to Costa Rica and Panama. It sent more than 200 Venezuelans accused of gang ties to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned at an infamous mega-prison. And it has tried to deport migrants to violence-torn Libya and South Sudan, though those efforts have been stymied by U.S. courts.
Forbes
16 minutes ago
- Forbes
JD Vance Calls Lack Of Rate Cuts ‘Malpractice' After Soft Inflation
Vice President JD Vance went after the Federal Reserve for declining to lower interest rates, as President Donald Trump has continuously demanded, in the latest White House criticism of the historically operationally independent central bank. Vance's criticism followed the May consumer price index release which revealed less inflation than ... More economists expected. 'The president has been saying this for a while, but it's even more clear: the refusal by the Fed to cut rates is monetary malpractice,' Vance posted to the X social media platform Wednesday morning. Vance's critique came immediately after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released May's consumer price index inflation report, which revealed less price increases than economists anticipated. Trump has loudly called for the Fed to lower rates since taking office in January, even teasing the firing of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
