A federal judge in Vermont ordered the immediate release on Wednesday of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations.

Mahdawi, a 34-year-old green card holder born and raised in the West Bank who has lived in the U.S. for a decade, was arrested on April 14 upon arriving at an appointment at an immigration office in Vermont, becoming the latest high-profile target of the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students engaged in anti-Israel campus activism. Mahdawi is expected to graduate from Columbia in May. 

U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered that Mahdawi be released on bail, pending the resolution of his habeas petition.  

In a comment outside of the courthouse, Mahdawi told a crowd of supporters, “To my people in Palestine: I feel your pain, I see your suffering, and I see freedom and it is very very soon.”

Mahdawi played a central role in organizing anti-Israel protests at Columbia that roiled the campus after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

He helped to revive the anti-Israel student group coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest after the Oct. 7 attacks and was a member of the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. He also appeared on “60 Minutes” in December 2023 in a segment on pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia, where he said, “I did not say that I justify what Hamas has done. I said I can empathize. To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me that path moving forward.”

At the time of Mahdawi’s arrest, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in an email to Jewish Insider that he “was a ringleader in the Columbia protests,” sharing a New York Post article citing anonymous State Department sources claiming that he had used “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students.

According to a DHS notice for Mahdawi to appear, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that his “presence and activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.” 

Wednesday’s verdict was a sharp contrast to a decision earlier this month in a Louisiana federal court that another anti-Israel protest leader at Columbia, Mahmoud Khalil, can be deported, based on the same legal argument invoked by the U.S. government. Both cases have drawn scrutiny from some Jewish groups and legal experts over questions around due process and First Amendment rights.