The Trump administration will argue before a panel of three conservative federal judges Tuesday to put Columbia University graduate student Mohsen Mahdawi back behind bars. One judge has already expressed support for the government’s right to imprison Mahdawi, a Palestinian student protest leader.

“They’re arguing that I should be put in prison just for speaking up against the genocide of my people,” Mahdawi told The Intercept.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took Mahdawi away in handcuffs in April after he arrived at what he thought was his naturalization interview to become a U.S. citizen, as The Intercept first reported. Since a federal judge ordered Mahdawi’s release on bail in May, the Trump administration has been working to re-imprison him and remove him from the country.

Speaking to The Intercept, Mahdawi connected his case to President Donald Trump’s larger project to crush his political opponents. Trump has deployed the National Guard to cities he perceives as strongholds for his rivals, Mahdawi noted, while facilitating Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and backing plans to take over Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

“There is a very clear connection that I see between what is happening in America and what’s happening in Israel. Both of them don’t want democracy,” Mahdawi said. “They want strength and domination and control.”

On Tuesday, attorneys for the U.S. government will argue in federal appeals court to overturn Mahdawi’s release on the grounds that the federal court that freed him was operating outside of its jurisdiction. All three judges on the panel were appointed by Republican presidents: two Trump appointees, William J. Nardini and Steven J. Menashi, and a George W. Bush appointee, Debra Ann Livingston. Menashi has already argued that it was not within the court’s jurisdiction to question the government’s detention of Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk, another student ICE abducted earlier this year.

The U.S. and Israel........

© The Intercept