Good luck getting the answers to those questions from most of the MSM. The story as written yesterday – and I read many articles on the subject, because I was curious and remain curious – is that he was a graduate student at Columbia and one of the leaders of the anti-Israel protests. Every single article quoted his lawyer thusly (this is taken from yesterday’s NY Post article on Madawi, but it’s basically the same quote I saw over and over):

Mahdawi “was unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity,” his attorney, Luna Droubi, told the outlet.

“He came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech,” she added.

That sets the tone that Mahdawi is just an innocent guy who merely is Palestinian and as such was picked up by the big bad fascist Trump administration. I have little doubt this is the “narrative” that many (perhaps most?) people who read or hear the story in the usual MSM left-leaning outlets would take away and will take away. And even the NY Post, which leans right, didn’t initially tell us much more about his participation in the Columbia demonstrations or the reasons he was detained other than that he was a protest “leader” and then what his lawyer said.

This is reporting? The “protests” – and how they targeted and harassed Jewish students, for example, or damaged property – were not described in any depth. We learn that Madawi is from the West Bank (traditional Judea and Samaria) and is a student in the US, but that’s just his identity. Most articles didn’t say what he is alleged to have done, which is a pretty important detail.

Mahlawi is reported to have been here ten years. Was he a student that whole time? That’s quite a stretch. This article says he’s in his mid-thirties, a trifle old for studenthood; this one says he’s been studying philosophy. Does that take ten years? Does Qatar or some NGO pay his tuition? I assume he originally came here on a student visa once Columbia had admitted him. I suspect the real reason he came here was to become a pro-Palestinian anti-Israel activist, although I have no proof of that.

More from yesterday’s Post article:

“It’s kind of a death sentence,” Mahdawi, who previously led Columbia’s Palestinian student union, said, according to the Intercept.

“Because my people are being killed unjustly in an indiscriminate way.”

His people? Killed unjustly – after 10/7? And if it was in “an indiscriminate way” the death toll would be much much higher, and no one would be warned before a bombing to get out of the way. But we’re used to Mahdawi’s sort of rhetoric.

More:

“This is the outcome,” Mahdawi said, according to [The Intercept]. “I will be either living or imprisoned or killed by the apartheid system.”

“The apartheid system” – that’s his description of Israel, probably the most ethnically and religiously mixed country in the Middle East. Again, typical rhetoric. But do we really need to import it? Don’t we have enough of it already, especially in universities?

My search for more information about Mahdawi last night turned up almost nothing that answered my questions about his actual actions, until I found this at Canary Mission, a group that describes itself this way:

Canary Mission documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond. Canary Mission investigates hatred across the entire political spectrum, including the far right, far left and anti-Israel activists.

Canary Mission is motivated by a desire to combat the rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses.

Here’s Mahdawi’s page there. There are several videos and a lot of information, no allegations of direct acts of violence on his part but lots of support for Palestinian terrorism. One of his statements is that he was born in a “Palestinian refugee camp,” which conjures up images of a temporary encampment but actually usually refers to ordinary towns with ordinary homes – in his case he says he’s a third-generation Palestinian refugee. Only Palestinians inherit their refugee status and the UN supports it.

So, what rights does a non-citizen green card holder have? The law states:

Green cards can be revoked, New York-based immigration lawyer Linda Dakin-Grimm told VOA.

“It’s not that common, but it also isn’t rare. People lose their green cards most often when they’re convicted of crimes. … A green card is not citizenship. It’s seen as a privilege that you earn, but you can also lose it if you engage in conduct that is contrary to the conditions that green card holders live under,” she said.

Examples of crimes that can cause a green card holder can lose their status include aggravated felonies, drug offenses, fraud, or national security concerns such as ties to a terrorist group. Green card holders can also lose their status and lawful permanent residency status for being deemed a threat to national security.

How are “ties” defined, and what sort of threat to national security is enough? I suppose it depends on the judge – as do so many things in law. As far as I’m concerned, the bar should be fairly low for deporting a non-citizen. Why should the US tolerate someone who has this sort of profile (from the Canary Mission site)?:

Mohsen Mahdawi is an anti-Israel activist leader who called for Israel’s destruction and justified Hamas terrorism in late 2023. Ten years earlier, he celebrated a terrorist who had murdered dozens of Israeli Jews in 1978. Mahdawi also showed support for the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia in April 2024. …

Mahdawi was also affiliated with the pro-terror activist group Within Our Lifetime (WOL) in 2023. He was reportedly a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) that same year. …

In an October 22, 2023 interview for a local New England newspaper, Mahdawi said: “Hamas is a product of the Israeli occupation.”

According to the newspaper, soon after October 7, 2023, Mahdawi and leaders of other anti-Israel student groups at Columbia wrote a statement that said: “We remind Columbia students that the Palestinian struggle for freedom is rooted in international law, under which occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land.”

Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.

The statement that Mahdawi reportedly co-authored continued: “If every political avenue available to Palestinians is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence break out.” …

In December 2023, during Israel’s war against Hamas, Mahdawi was interviewed [00:06:07] on the television show “60 Minutes” to discuss his campus activism.

During the interview, Mahdawi said [00:08:17]: “When somebody is hurting you, when you see this person is being punched in the face and this feeling, it is: You now feel my pain.”

The interviewer replied [00:08:30] back to Mahdawi: “But this Hamas attack wasn’t a punch in the face. This was a horrible terror attack.”

Mahdawi then said [00:08:43] that he “can empathize” with what Hamas did and continued: “To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me the path moving forward.” …

On February 3, 2013, a Facebook user shared a poem Mahdawi wrote that paid tribute to terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. Mahdawi left comments thanking the poster for sharing the text.

The poem said: “I will breathe home… / And fill my shame / And clean my gun / And collect my packages, my bombs / And embrace my gun…”

Dalal Mughrabi, a member of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), participated in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in Israel. She and other terrorists hijacked a bus in an attack that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, including 13 children.

Much more at the link, including a description of the activities of SJP. Also please see this.

Just because Mahdawi managed to become a student here and get a green card, does he have a right to become a citizen? I don’t see why. This writer (law professor Mark Goldfeder) agrees:

The current debate concerns § 212(a)(3)(b)(i)(vii), which allows for the deportation of any alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.” Some have claimed that deporting someone for these reasons violates the First Amendment. That is incorrect.

The premise of the question rests on the assumption that an alien (even a legal alien) has First Amendment rights that are exactly the same in every situation as the rights of a U.S. national or citizen. That is not the case. As the Supreme Court has made clear, sometimes the government may impose distinctions and conditions. …

As it turns out, more than 120 years of Supreme Court precedent explain that this is just such a condition the government might legitimately put on the holder of a visa or a green card without offending the First Amendment. Turner v. Williams was a case about anarchists who wanted to violently overthrow the government, but you can substitute for anarchists Hamas-affiliated anti-West agitators who want to violently overthrow our institutions. In that case, the court held:

“…Congress was of opinion that the tendency of the general exploitation of such views is so dangerous to the public weal that aliens who hold and advocate them would be undesirable additions to our population, whether permanently or temporarily, whether many or few;”

It certainly seems to be the case here.

Also:

In this [Khalil, friend and colleague of Mahdawi] case, it is possible to read the INA narrowly, as referring to the kind of endorsement or support that would not be protected speech even if done by a citizen — i.e., the provision of material support, including advocacy and even speech done in coordination with a foreign terrorist organization (see Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project). Under that reading, there is again no First Amendment concern because the First Amendment does not protect political speech or expressive conduct that materially supports foreign terrorist organizations. Several of the groups Khalil is affiliated with are accused of doing just that.

Today the NY Post has another article on Mahdawi, and this one finally covers the State Department’s stated reasons for calling a halt to his citizenship proceedings:

“Mahdawi played an active role in fall 2024 student protests at Columbia University, instructing protesters to physically push a small group of pro-Israel students, events that university officials later acknowledged as threatening rhetoric and intimidation,” the [State Department] source said.

The source also said Mahdawi was behind “antisemitic rhetoric” during the protests, including referring to Israel Defense Forces soldiers as terrorists and “shouting through a megaphone” at Jewish bystanders and supporters of Israel.

Mahdawi was shown in video footage speaking into a microphone during a campus protest while standing in front of a banner reading “By any means necessary” in a profile on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in December 2023. …

Mahdawi was co-president of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which celebrated the Oct. 7 terror attack, calling it “an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians in Gaza.”

The university later suspended the group in November 2023 for repeated violations of campus policy around protests.

Families of hostages still held by Hamas after the terror attack filed a lawsuit last month that alleged SJP had advance knowledge of Hamas’ bloody plans, accusing it of being “Hamas’ American propaganda arm” and pointing to an Instagram post by the group proclaiming “we are back!!” that it said was published minutes before the attack.

I have no problem with stopping this man from becoming a citizen, and even of deporting him.