MONTPELIER — The Vermont Senate voted Tuesday to condemn “the manner and circumstances” of the arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian activist and yearslong Upper Valley resident, by federal immigration agents in Colchester earlier this month.
Senators advanced a resolution about Mahdawi’s arrest on a 24-5 vote, with the “nays” all coming from among the chamber’s 13 Republicans. The measure, S.R.13, also called for Mahdawi — who’s been detained for more than two weeks at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans Town — to be “immediately released” as his case proceeds in federal court, adding that he also should “be afforded due process.”
The vote comes a day before a hearing is scheduled in Mahdawi’s case when a judge in Burlington could rule on whether the federal government must release him.
The Senate resolution is slated for a final vote Wednesday, and is expected to pass. Its lead sponsor, Windsor County Democratic Sen. Becca White, was with Mahdawi in Colchester shortly before he was arrested by masked, armed agents at an appointment for U.S. citizenship.
“This is an issue about which the Vermont Senate has a direct tie,” said the chamber’s President Pro Tempore, Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, on the floor. “We have a witness,” Baruth continued, who “has helped us to see the urgency of this moment.”
The Vermont House approved a similar statement criticizing Mahdawi’s detention last week. That measure, H.R.8, passed on a voice vote, so individual members’ decisions aren’t on the record — though a number of “nays” were audible around the chamber.
Attorneys for the Columbia University student, who is a lawful U.S. resident, argued last week in court that the federal government illegally targeted him for his pro-Palestinian speech at campus protests and that he shouldn’t have been detained. President Donald Trump’s administration, meanwhile, has said that Mahdawi should be removed from the country because his presence “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest,” according to court filings.
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Several Vermont senators who voted against the resolution Tuesday made remarks on the floor opposing it. Sen. David Weeks, R-Rutland, said he had spoken with a “law enforcement specialist” who reviewed the details of Mahdawi’s arrest, and Weeks thinks that, while “absolutely unusual,” it was “in keeping with law enforcement procedures.”
Baruth responded on the floor that while he understood there are situations where police operate with anonymity, he thinks Mahdawi’s detention deserves to be called out because it’s part of a larger pattern of similar arrests of students in recent weeks.
Sen. Russ Ingalls, R-Essex, then told his colleagues he did not “think that there was much to talk about” regarding whether Mahdawi’s arrest was carried out lawfully, considering also, he said, “the amount of illegal immigration that was perpetrated by the previous administration,” referring to former President Joe Biden.
In addition to Ingalls and Weeks, Sen. Terry Williams, also a Rutland Republican; Sen. Steve Heffernan, R-Addison; and Sen. Robert Norris, R-Franklin, voted against the measure. Sen. Larry Hart, R-Orange, wasn’t on the Senate floor for the vote.
During Mahdawi’s appointment earlier this month, which was at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester, the student affirmed his commitment to “defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign, and domestic,” according to court filings submitted by his attorneys.
But afterward, an immigration official told Mahdawi he needed to “‘check’ on some information,” and “ICE agents, masked and visibly armed, entered the interview room and shackled” Mahdawi, court filings state.
The federal officers ushered Mahdawi into a vehicle and attempted to get him on a plane en route to Louisiana, his lawyers have said. But Mahdawi’s attorneys quickly filed a lawsuit, and a judge issued a temporary order to keep him in Vermont.
Mahdawi, who grew up in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, told NPR in an interview the outlet published Tuesday that he arrived at the appointment thinking it would be his final step to becoming a citizen after spending 10 years in the U.S.
“I am centered internally. I am at peace,” he told the outlet, speaking at the prison in St. Albans Town. “While I still know deeply that this is a level of injustice that I am facing, I have faith. I have faith that justice will prevail.”
