In his first live interview since his release from ICE detention, Columbia University student and Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi recounts the traumatic experience of his arrest and incarceration. Mahdawi, a green card holder who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, was arrested in Vermont on April 14 when he appeared for what he was told would be a citizenship interview, and spent more than two weeks in U.S. immigration custody, where he was held in retaliation for his speech in support of Palestinian rights. Mahdawi’s detention has led him to reflect on the “interconnectedness between injustices,” as multiple members of his family in Palestine have been “unjustly” incarcerated in Israeli jails. “Now I can feel their pain,” says Mahdawi. Despite the U.S. government and pro-Israel groups’ attempts to silence his calls for an end to genocide in Gaza, he adds, “I share my pain with the world.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/30276425

May 16, 2025

“In this prison, […], ICE rents a section of the prison. And the section where I was, it was a mixture of three-quarters of people who have committed crimes before, and one-quarter of migrants who come in and out. And I was — my cell was C-38, the first cell in that C section where the migrants are. So, I saw waves of the migrants. Those are not just migrants. Those are the people who feed us, who plant our food, who harvest our organic, delicious Vermont produce.”