By Holly Ramer and Amanda Swinhart
Montpellier, vt. (AP) – A Palestinian student arrested during an interview concerning the finalization of his American citizenship helped launch a fundraising campaign of $ 1 million to strengthen the legal number for Vermont immigrants on Thursday, a week after a federal judge released him from the guard.
Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, who led demonstrations against the War of Israel in Gaza at the University of Columbia, spent 16 days in a prison of state before a judge ordered the liberation on April 30. The Trump administration said Mahdawi should be expelled because his activism threatens his foreign policy objectives, but the judge ruled that he raised a “substantial assertion that the government has arrested the speech to him with the fact that he moved.
Immigration authorities have held students from all over the country since the first days of the Trump administration. Many of them participated in campus demonstrations against the War of Israel-Hamas. 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 greater than what divides us. Our humanity is much greater than unjust laws,” he said at a press conference. “And it is also a message to the rest of the world. It starts from Vermont.”
Mahdawi joined the Treasurer of the State of Vermont, Mike Papeak, the leader of the majority of Senate Kesha Ram Hinsdale and the community defenders to announce the vermont immigration Legal Defense Fund. The group, which also includes lawyers and philanthropists, says that the fund will be used to extend the legal team of Vermont Asylum Project Assistance, Train Pro Bono Attorneys and associate with community groups to support those facing expulsion, detention and family separation.
“I am here with an important and diversified group of Vermonters to say: we protect and take care of our people, whatever their national origin, whatever their immigration status, whatever the language they speak,” said Ram Hinsdale. “We take care of ours against all threats.”
Members of the Vermont Congress Delegation took the floor on behalf of Mahdawi, as are state politicians. The Vermont Chamber and Senate adopted resolutions condemning the circumstances of his detention and pleading for his release and regular procedural rights.
Republican governor Phil Scott said there was no justification for the way the Mahdawi had been arrested, in an immigration office in Colchester.
“The police officers of this country should not operate in the shadows or hide behind masks,” said the governor 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 West Bank occupied by Israeli and moved to the United States in 2014. In Columbia, he organized demonstrations on campus and co-founded the Palestinian student with Mahmoud Khalil, another Palestinian resident of the United States and was studied by March.
His release, which is disputed by the government, allows him to travel outside his original state, the Vermont and to attend his diploma in Columbia in New York later this month.
On Thursday, he described the sharing of a prison cell with a Mexico farmer who prayed every evening.
“I think his prayers have been granted 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, which would feed the hungry, which would house the homeless and which would provide support for illegal immigrants. ”
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California Daily Newspapers