The Congressional Progressive Staff Association, a congressional employee group for progressive staffers and prospective staffers, hosted a happy hour this week with Columbia University protest leader Mohsen Mahdawi, whom the administration has been trying for months to deport.

The Department of Homeland Security has characterized Mahdawi as a “ringleader” in anti-Israel protests at Columbia and accused him of using “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students. 

The administration has also claimed that Mahdawi admitted to being involved in and supporting terrorist violence, including telling a gun shop owner more than a decade ago that he had “considerable firearm experience” and used guns to “kill Jews while he was in Palestine,” that he attempted to purchase a rifle and a machine gun, that he claimed to have made guns for Hezbollah and that he said that he enjoyed killing Jews.

Mahdawi’s lawyers have denied those claims and noted that they were dismissed by law enforcement at the time.

In a “60 Minutes” interview in December 2023, Mahdawi said he could “empathize” with Hamas and its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. “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.”

On his Instagram page, Mahdawi shared photos honoring what he called the “martyrdom” of his “cousin,” Maysara Masharqa, a field commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade — designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel, the E.U. and others — calling him a “fierce resistance fighter.”

He also called Hamas a “product of the Israeli occupation” and reportedly helped craft a statement justifying the Oct. 7 attacks as “rooted in international law.”

In its advertisement for the event on Instagram, CPSA described Mahdawi as “the student activist from Columbia University arrested by ICE at his immigration hearing and detained for protesting the Palestinian genocide.”

Jewish Democratic staffers have told Jewish Insider that increasing anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment has made them feel afraid, uncomfortable and shunned among fellow progressive staff on Capitol Hill since the Oct. 7 attacks.

CPSA did not respond to a request for comment.