The following appeared on Democracy Now! on April 16, 2025
The Trump administration is now seeking to deport Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, who is being held in a prison in northwest Vermont. He was detained by Homeland Security agents when he went to an immigration services center to take a civics test that is the final step in the process of becoming a naturalized citizen. Mahdawi moved to Vermont from the West Bank in 2014 and has been a legal permanent resident, or green card holder, since 2015.
All three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation are calling for Mahdawi’s release, including Congressmember Becca Balint. “This should terrify every single person living in this country, regardless of your citizenship status,” says Balint. “This is Trump creating his own army of brownshirts right here in our country.”
All three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation are calling for Mahdawi’s release, including Congressmember Becca Balint. “This should terrify every single person living in this country, regardless of your citizenship status,” says Balint. “This is Trump creating his own army of brownshirts right here in our country.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Vermont, where the Trump administration is seeking to deport Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi because his activities could, quote, “potentially undermine,” unquote, the Middle East peace process. That’s the reason cited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a memo the Department of Homeland Security submitted in Mahdawi’s case — the same one cited for the detention of his fellow Columbia student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil.
Mohsen Mahdawi was set to graduate Columbia this spring, but he’s now being held in a prison in northwest Vermont after he was detained by Homeland Security agents when he went to an immigration services center to take a civics test that’s the final step in the process of becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. Mahdawi has been a permanent resident, a green card holder, since 2015 — for a decade. He moved to Vermont from the occupied West Bank in 2014, where he was the third generation in his family to live in Faraa, a Palestinian refugee camp. He then attended Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, before transferring to Columbia in 2021 to study international affairs.
His legal team says they have not received, quote, “any information or basis for his detention.” They say the militant Zionist organization Betar has called for his deportation and targeted him online. The group wrote online Monday, quote, “We confirm we provided info on him and many others,” unquote.
This comes as all three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation — Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, as well as the Congressmember Becca Balint — are calling for Mahdawi’s release, as well as Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott, who issued a statement Tuesday criticizing his detention.
In a minute, we’ll speak with Democratic Congressmember Balint of Vermont. But first, Democracy Now! spoke Tuesday to one of the many people who knows Mahdawi well and have been speaking out since he was taken by federal immigration agents.
GILI GETZ: My name is Gili Getz. I’m an organizer. I’m Israeli. I’m a peace activist, and I’m an organizer with the Israelis for Peace. It’s a group we started after October 7. We looked for a place where we could be fully human and recognize the humanity of Israelis and Palestinians and everybody who lives in the land.
And Mohsen was an incredible partner in conversation about peacemaking and bridge building in a reality that’s extremely polarized. He was doing the really hard work of empathy, listening to people, trying to bring people together across enormous divide. And the news of his kidnapping by the Trump administration was so devastating to us, as is the news of kidnapping of all students, illegally and unlawfully, as part of a larger attack on our democracy, our freedom, just our ability to live in a democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Gili Getz, an organizer with the group Israelis for Peace NYC, who knows Mohsen Mahdawi.
For more, we go to Brattleboro, Vermont, where we’re joined by Democratic Congressmember Becca Balint. She’s the first Jewish member of Congress to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. She is the granddaughter of a man who was lost in the Holocaust. She issued a statement this week with Vermont Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch on the Trump administration’s detention of Mohsen, saying, quote, “This is immoral, inhumane, and illegal. Mr. Mahdawi, a legal resident of the United States, must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.”
Congressmember Balint, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Talk about what’s taken place, I mean, the fact that he was brought to Vermont, and explain. He reached out to all three of you, Senators Welch and Sanders and you, before saying, “I’m being told to come in for this test. I’m worried this is a trap.”
REP. BECCA BALINT: Yeah. And so, you know, what I want people to understand is you have a situation, as you said, he has been a green card holder for 10 years. Mr. Mahdawi has been accused of no crime. OK, this is critically important for people to understand. He’s been accused of no crime, went in for his final citizenship interview — it seems like this was possibly a ruse to get him to show up — then arrested upon his arrival. And again, I want people to understand, these were masked, hooded men in plainclothes with an unmarked van handcuffing him. This is not the America I think many of us thought we lived in. And he was not afforded the ability to speak to his attorney right away. He was not afforded due process in a court of law. He’s being attacked because of free speech. This should terrify every single person living in this country regardless of your citizenship status. They are coming for people because of their beliefs and what they may have said.
And, you know, I just — I’m so enraged by this also because of who Mr. Mahdawi is. He has said in the past that the fight for freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. He is not someone who is a threat to our supposed international foreign policy interests.
And it’s critically important that we do not allow Secretary Rubio to make these claims without providing proof, evidence to Congress. He is required to provide certification of his personal determination about Mahdawi’s threat to our country to Congress. That has not happened. And it is clear that he is abusing his position as secretary of state, and I won’t have it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Representative, you’re a vice ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. Have you had any conversations with your fellow members of the committee, especially some Republicans, about this state of affairs, of federal officers, as you say, masked, grabbing people off the street and disappearing them, effectively?
REP. BECCA BALINT: You would think that Republicans who serve on the Judiciary Committee would care deeply about the rule of law, care deeply about the Constitution. When we brought up the case of Abrego Garcia, that you were just discussing on the show, who is a constituent of our ranking member, Jamie Raskin, in the committee, we were mocked. We were dismissed, saying that — they were spewing all kinds of lies about him.
And they do not seem to understand that their stance on this is a threat to Americans everywhere. They are using talking points from this administration that are based in lies, and they don’t seem to care the damage that they are doing, certainly to these individual men and women who are being detained and disappeared, but, more broadly, to our Constitution and the system of government that we have here. It is shocking. It’s disheartening. And you can bet that we’re going to continue to bring up these issues within the committee. But it is a bleak time right now in the Judiciary Committee, where we can’t even get our colleagues to stand up for our Constitution, something we thought we all agreed upon.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk, as well, about the difference with the public officials in Vermont? There was recently a Russian scientist working at Harvard, Kseniia Petrova, was detained by ICE and held at a Vermont women’s prison in South Burlington for a week. How have officials in Vermont responded to these things?
REP. BECCA BALINT: So, I will tell you that it is clear to me that we need a much stronger pushback from all elected officials in Vermont. I want more transparency about the kind of agreements that the state of Vermont has entered into with the federal government on these cases. Many of us in Vermont — and I was at a town hall the other night that was packed, many people asking about how is it that in a state that believes so clearly — the name, you know, the motto of our state is “freedom in unity.” We stand up for each other. We believe in the rule of law. We believe in freedom — that we need more full-throated statements from elected officials, from the governor on down, about asking for more transparency on these issues. Vermonters do not want this happening in their name. And you can bet that the senators and I are going to continue to demand more answers. This is not who we are as Vermonters. It’s not who we are as Americans.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Becca Balint, I wanted to ask you about Rumeysa Ozturk, the graduate student at Tufts who was taken off the street as she was going to dinner by masked agents. She even said to them, “I’m calling the police.” They said, “We are the police.” Also, interestingly, one of her lawyers said, at a “Liberation Seder” outside of ICE headquarters in New York the other day, that she had told him that when the ICE agents surrounded her, they said, “We are not monsters” — one of them said, “We are not monsters. We are only following orders.” Now, she, too, was driven to Vermont and then flown away. Can you explain, since now the federal court in Vermont is taking on her case, what’s happening with Rumeysa?
REP. BECCA BALINT: Yes. And so, it is deeply disturbing that she was so quickly flown away from our state. It’s difficult to — obviously, to have oversight when, without any delay in her movement, we were not able to get the answers that we need. There’s a lot we don’t know about her case, so I don’t want to misspeak.
What I do know is that any person who is in this situation needs to be absolutely clear that they have right to due process. This is the piece that’s getting lost here. This is the thing that my Republican colleagues will say. I had a colleague who used to be on the Judiciary Committee with me. Her name is Representative Victoria Spartz. She said in a town hall a few weeks ago, you know, that these folks who are here legally, if they’re not residents, aren’t entitled to due process. That’s absolutely not true. Anyone within the borders of the United States are entitled to due process.
And so, it is critically important that we, as Americans, regardless of party, stand up for all of these students who are being detained, all of these professors and people who are simply speaking their minds, who are being detained, that this is not in accordance with what our government stands for.
And it is chilling to the bone to have somebody say, “We are just following orders.” That is what they said in Nazi Germany. That is what people said when they were listening to the Gestapo. This has got to stop. This is Trump creating his own army of brownshirts right here in our country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Congresswoman, I wanted to ask you about the — if you could comment on the irony that here we’ve seen repeatedly now federal agents, as you say, masked when they are apprehending and detaining people, at the same time that the Trump administration is demanding that universities ban masks in any protest held on university campuses?
REP. BECCA BALINT: Yes, that gives up the game right there. OK? This entire fury that the Trump administration has directed at institutions of higher ed, it’s not about antisemitism. It’s not. And I will not continue to have this, these outrageous statements, being made in my name and others who have been actually impacted by antisemitism. This is about authoritarianism. This is about attacking institutions, including schools, so that everyone will bend a knee and will cower in the face of an autocrat. This is what that’s about. And the fact that they are so intellectually inconsistent even about something like masks gives up the game right there. They don’t care about antisemitism. They are using this as a tool, a battering ram, against our institutions. And I hope that so many Americans who are of Jewish descent will stand up with me and say, “Not in our name. Absolutely not.”
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Congressmember Becca Balint, you’re a graduate of the Harvard School of Education. Before you were a state legislator and a congressmember, you were a middle school teacher. Your thoughts on Harvard standing up? We’ll be speaking with a Harvard law professor at the end of the broadcast. But rejecting the Trump administration’s attack on them, and now President Trump is threatening to pull their nonprofit status.
REP. BECCA BALINT: I am thrilled that Harvard is taking a stance. And I am frustrated that other institutions of higher learning are not taking a stance. I hope they will get some courage and some backbone for what Harvard has done.
Here’s the message. Whether you’re an institution of higher ed or you are a law firm or you are an organization or you’re a business, we have got to stand together. They are going to continue to pick us off one by one. And our strength comes in our unity. And I am angry that it took Harvard standing up for some other colleges and universities to say, “Oh, maybe that actually is the right path.” I am very disturbed by how easily people have decided to take a knee in front of this autocrat. And we have to stand together, folks. We have to stand together.
AMY GOODMAN: You lost your grandfather in the Holocaust?
REP. BECCA BALINT: I did. I did. And I have often asked myself throughout my adulthood: What would I do in the face of such depravity? And the answer is: You don’t lose your voice. You stand up. And he lost his life in the last few weeks of the war, standing up for another who was imprisoned. They were on a forced march out of Mauthausen concentration camp. And one of his fellow prisoners fell behind, and he stayed back to help him, and they were both executed. And that has ridden me my whole life. You do the right thing even in the midst of depravity, even when there is danger. You have to have skin in the game. And that’s my message to all Americans. We all have to stand up for each other.
AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Congressmember Becca Balint of Vermont, first Jewish member of Congress to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, the daughter of an immigrant and the granddaughter of her grandfather, who died in the Holocaust.
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The above is republished here under a Creative Commons License. The original piece can be found at: Mohsen Mahdawi’s Abduction “Should Terrify” Us, Says VT Rep. Balint, Whose Grandfather Was Killed in Holocaust