Matt Cameron, a Boston-based immigration attorney, says it has happened to a couple clients of his, but “always because they have previous immigration or criminal history which makes them deportable.” Mahdawi’s attorneys say he has no criminal record and is a “committed Buddhist” who “believes in non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion.” He doesn’t appear to have violated immigration law. For him, the arrest was “shocking” — not because it was unexpected but because it made him feel as if “the rule of law that we constantly talk about is not as stable and not as foundational as we might think it is.” What was most striking, though, was how calm Mahdawi appeared. In a habeas corpus petition filed shortly after Mahdawi’s arrest, his attorneys wrote that 10 days after Trump’s inauguration, the far-right and Zionist group Betar US posted about Mahdawi on X, saying he was “on our deport list.” In a March Instagram post, Canary Mission, another right-wing group, said Mahdawi had “justified Hamas terrorism.”
Author: Gaby Del Valle
Published at: 2025-04-15 22:48:14
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