In an interview nearly a week after a federal judge ordered him released from detention while his case proceeds, Mohsen Mahdawi recounted his arrest and detainment, saying that he feared his citizenship interview was a "trap" and that he's concerned that democracy in the U.S. is under attack.
A Department of Homeland Security official pushed back on concerns that the interview may have been a trap staged to detain Mahdawi.
"The Department does not 'stage' interviews or any other type of adjudication," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. "If an alien is seeking a benefit, they will almost assuredly be interviewed. If the alien is subject to detention, that alien will almost assuredly be detained. One has no bearing on the other."
"Illegal aliens do not have a right to roam freely in our country, nor do they have a right to elude federal authorities," McLaughlin said.
Mahdawi, who co-founded a university organization called the Palestinian Student Union with detained Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank before moving in 2014 to the U.S. where he has been a legal resident for 10 years.
After his arrest at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Vermont, where he was undergoing his citizenship interview, Mahdawi said he was quickly put in handcuffs, but was not given a reason for why he was being detained.
"The first thing they've done is they isolated me from my lawyer, separated me from my lawyer," Mahdawi said of his arrest. "They did not show us any paperwork they had on them. I told them, 'I am a peaceful man and I will collaborate.'"
Mahdawi claims ICE officials were planning to send him to Louisiana where Khalil is detained, but missed the flight by a few minutes. His lawyers, who crafted several habeas petitions in anticipation that he could be detained, filed an emergency request for a temporary restraining order, which a federal judge granted.
"They were preparing to send me to Louisiana," Mahdawi said. "They had my flight tickets really printed, and two agents came to take me ... to ship me on a commercial flight from Burlington Airport to New York and from New York to Louisiana."
Mahdawi told ABC News that his Buddhist faith has kept him grounded as his immigration and federal cases continue to play out in court and the threat of deportation still lingers.
He said he believes "everybody should be alert and alarmed" that the Trump administration targeted him for his advocacy.
"We are at a very critical time," Mahdawi said. "What is happening in America is going to affect the rest of the world. The attack on democracy that guarantees many rights for people, democracy that has established international order and human rights, is a very dangerous phenomenon."
