A Gun-Shop Customer Says He Threatened to Kill Jews.
Three Rulings Later, His Deportation Case Is Still Not Resolved.
A 100-page investigation published September 2, 2026 by journalists David Collier and Rachel Feldman resurfaced a 2015 allegation against Mohsen Mahdawi, a lawful permanent resident and former Columbia student activist: a gun-shop customer told police Mahdawi described building “modified 9mm submachine guns to kill Jews while he was in Palestine.” The FBI interviewed Mahdawi about it in 2015 and closed the case without charges. Mahdawi denies making the statements.
The allegation resurfaced in a Department of Justice court filing a decade later, after ICE detained Mahdawi at his own U.S. citizenship interview in April 2025. Since then, his case has traveled a path almost no other campus deportation matter has: dismissed by an immigration judge, reinstated by the Board of Immigration Appeals, and now caught in an unresolved fight over whether the government can use foreign-policy authority to deport a green card holder for protected political speech.
As of this writing, Mahdawi is not detained, has not been convicted of anything, and his removal case remains open on appeal.
- 2015 — the year a gun-shop customer's account of Mahdawi's alleged statements first reached police; the FBI investigated and closed the case without charges · Source: Fox News
- $400 million — in federal grants and contracts Columbia lost in March 2025 over its handling of campus antisemitism · Source: The Washington Post
- $200 million — Columbia agreed to pay over three years to restore federal funding, July 2025 · Source: NBC News
- ~300 — student visas Secretary of State Marco Rubio said had been revoked under foreign-policy removal authority as of March 2025 · Source: CBS News
- 3 rulings — an immigration judge terminated Mahdawi's case, the BIA reinstated it, and the Second Circuit overturned his release order — spanning roughly 15 months since his 2025 detention · Source: ACLU; VTDigger
Mahdawi arrived in the United States in 2014 from the Al-Fara'a refugee camp in the West Bank and later became a lawful permanent resident. In the summer of 2015, according to a Department of Justice court filing made public in April 2025, a customer at a Windsor, Vermont gun shop and firearms museum told the shop owner that Mahdawi said he “like[d] to kill Jews” and described building modified submachine guns to do so while in Palestine. The shop owner reported the account to police. The FBI interviewed Mahdawi that November and closed its investigation without filing charges. Mahdawi has consistently denied making the statements; his attorneys cite the closed FBI file as exculpatory.
The allegation sat dormant for a decade until DHS restated it in a May 9, 2025 press release, after Mahdawi had become a visible campus activist at Columbia. Asst. Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called him a “ringleader” of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, citing the same third-party gun-shop account as part of the government's case for removal.
“Court documents show Mahdawi allegedly told a gun shop owner that he had considerable firearms experience and he 'used to kill Jews.'”
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS Assistant Secretary, May 9, 2025
ICE detained Mahdawi on April 14, 2025, when he arrived in Colchester, Vermont for what he believed was his U.S. citizenship interview. Days later, U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered him released on bail via a habeas corpus petition. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked a foreign-policy removal authority under immigration law — the same authority used against a separate Columbia-affiliated green card holder, Mahmoud Khalil, in a parallel but factually distinct case — arguing that Mahdawi's continued presence undermines U.S. foreign policy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who caucuses with Democrats, called the detention unlawful and demanded Mahdawi's immediate release. Vermont's congressional delegation — Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) and Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) — joined Sanders in calling the arrest “immoral, inhumane and illegal.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) argued the government “can't disappear people for exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Mohsen Mahdawi must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released…
DHS pushed back on that framing directly, tying Mahdawi's activism to the broader case against him rather than treating his detention as a free-speech matter.
The Palestinian at Columbia University who used a siren to drown out hostage protesters and expressed empathy for the October 7th Hamas attack is now facing the consequences of his actions.
On February 13, 2026, Immigration Judge Nina Froes terminated Mahdawi's removal proceedings — not on the merits of the gun-shop allegation, but because DHS could not authenticate a photocopied memo it said was signed by Secretary Rubio. “This decision is an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice,” Mahdawi said afterward.
The government appealed. On April 29, 2026, the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed the immigration judge, reinstated the removal proceedings, and ordered Mahdawi removed to Jordan. Then, on July 21, 2026, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Crawford's original release order on habeas-jurisdiction grounds — without ordering Mahdawi back into custody. As of this writing, he remains free while the case continues on appeal.
April 14, 2025: ICE detains Mahdawi at his citizenship interview.
April 30, 2025: Judge Crawford orders him released on bail.
Feb. 13, 2026: Immigration judge terminates removal proceedings over an unauthenticated DOJ memo.
April 29, 2026: BIA reverses the judge, reinstates proceedings, orders removal to Jordan.
July 21, 2026: Second Circuit overturns the release order but does not order re-detention.
Aug. 29, 2026: A separate federal ruling finds Rubio's ideological visa-revocation pattern unconstitutional in a related case.
That August 29 ruling matters here even though Mahdawi was not the plaintiff: a federal judge found that Secretary Rubio's practice of revoking visas and green cards based on students' political speech about Israel and Gaza violated the First and Fifth Amendments. The same enforcement theory underlies the government's case against Mahdawi — which is why his removal, ordered by the BIA four months earlier, is very likely headed for further review rather than resolution.
Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student... This is the first arrest of many to come.
Posted about Mahmoud Khalil's arrest, a separate but related Columbia deportation case under the same enforcement theory.
Mahdawi's case did not happen in isolation. Columbia's own antisemitism task force found the university's response to campus antisemitism after October 7, 2023 “serious” and “pervasive.” The Trump administration cut $400 million in federal grants and contracts to the university in March 2025; Columbia settled in July 2025, agreeing to pay $200 million over three years and adopt new admissions and disciplinary standards to restore funding. Secretary Rubio said roughly 300 student visas nationwide had been revoked as of March 2025 under the same foreign-policy authority invoked against Mahdawi.
Columbia has committed to ending their ridiculous DEI policies, admitting students based ONLY on MERIT, and protecting the Civil Liberties of their students on campus.
Posted on Columbia's federal funding settlement, not specific to Mahdawi's case.
Mahdawi's attorneys frame his fight in exactly those terms. “This appeal is not about me,” he said after the government moved to resume proceedings in March 2026. “It is about whether the Trump administration can weaponize immigration law to silence dissent.” The government's position is that a lawful permanent resident's continued presence can be terminated on foreign-policy grounds regardless of that framing — a theory a federal court has now found unconstitutional at least once, in a case that was not his own.
A decade-old, denied allegation from a gun-shop customer's account is now at the center of a federal deportation fight that has already produced three contradictory rulings over roughly fifteen months. Mahdawi is not convicted of anything, and a separate federal court has already found the government's underlying legal theory unconstitutional once. Whether that theory survives on appeal in his own case is still, as of this writing, an open question — not a settled one.
