An immigration judge has blocked the Trump administration from deporting Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian activist who was arrested by federal agents last year during a US citizenship interview in Vermont.
Lawyers for Mahdawi gave details of the decision in a court filing on Tuesday with a federal appeals court in New York, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to his release from immigration custody in April.
“I am grateful to the court for honoring the rule of law and holding the line against the government’s attempts to trample on due process,” Mahdawi, who is a permanent US resident, or green card holder, said in a statement.
He continued: “This decision is an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice. Nearly a year ago, I was detained at my citizenship interview not for breaking the law but for speaking against the genocide of Palestinians.”
The judge, Nina Froes, had ruled last Friday that the evidence that the Trump administration had submitted to the court was not admissible, due to an inability to “meet its burden of proving removability”. According to the judge’s order, the government failed to properly authenticate a memorandum purported to be signed by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.




Millions of files related to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein suggest the existence of a “global criminal enterprise” that carried out acts meeting the legal threshold of crimes against humanity, a panel of independent experts appointed by the United Nations human rights council has said.
Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from America’s national parks.
Six backcountry skiers were stranded and 10 others were missing on Tuesday, Feb. 17, after an avalanche in Northern California swept through as a powerful winter storm battered the region with heavy snow and high winds.
As President Donald Trump prepares to convene the first official meeting of his speciously named Board of Peace on Thursday, he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have re-escalated demands that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions imminently disarm—with Netanyahu insisting that all small arms must be turned over before the Israeli military withdraws any of its forces.





























