Tonight in Your Rights: Judge compares Trump's student detentions to Red Scare
Freed Columbia University student tells Trump: "I am not afraid of you." Trump officials to take the hot seat on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and more
In a fiery order releasing Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi on Wednesday, a federal judge likened the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine protesters to the Red Scare and other anti-communist panics of U.S. history.
“The court also considers the extraordinary setting of this case and others like it,” U.S. District Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford wrote in a 29-page opinion. “Legal residents not charged with crimes or misconduct are being arrested and threatened with deportation for stating their views on the political issues of the day. Our nation has seen times like this before, especially during the Red Scare and Palmer Raids of 1919-1920 that led to the deportation of hundreds of people suspected of anarchist or communist views.”
The judge noted that thousands of noncitizens were also targeted for deportation in McCarthy era.
“The wheel of history has come around again, but as before these times of excess will pass,” the opinion states.
Former Nuremberg prosecutor turned Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson also makes an appearance in the opinion’s historical tour de force, through a dissent in the case of U.S. ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy in which he wrote: “Security is like liberty in that many are the crimes committed in its name.”
According to Politico, the freed Mahdawi declared outside a federal courthouse: “I am saying it clear and loud. To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you.”
Some public reactions to this topic have been:
Targeted students have started legal defense funds, and some upcoming May Day protests focus on the detained students.
Judges unanimously defend students’ speech
So far, every single judge who considered the free speech rights of the targeted student protesters has rebuked the Trump administration, civil liberties expert Jameel Jaffer observed.
“The First Amendment categorically forecloses the government from deporting people solely because of their political viewpoints,” human rights lawyer Jameel Jaffer wrote on social media.
That was true in the cases of Mahdawi and Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, as well as the case filed by the American Association of University Professors, he noted.
Another federal judge in New Jersey ruled in favor of Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil on jurisdiction, but that case has not yet reached the First Amendment challenge.
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A 34-year-old born in the West Bank, Mahdawi has held a green card for 10 years and lives in a cabin he built in a small town in Vermont. He’s won the vocal backing of a congressional delegation, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.-At Large).
“We are relieved that Mohsen Mahdawi was released on bail from ICE detention in Vermont, and that the constitutional right to due process has prevailed. Mohsen Mahdawi is here in the United States legally and acted legally. He should never have experienced this grave injustice,” they wrote in a statement, vowing to keep fighting Trump’s “assault on the rule of law.”
The judge’s ruling describes the 125 letters that poured into his chambers in support of Mahdawi, including from the Jewish community. “Mr. Mahdawi's release will benefit his community, which appears to deeply cherish and value him,” the ruling states.
Welch posed for a photo with the freed student, which his office shared with All Rise News.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia case update
As we reported in “Rising This Week,” a judge’s order pausing the evidence-gathering phase of Abrego Garcia’s case was set to expire today.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis refused to extend it, and the case restarted today at 5 p.m. Eastern Time.
That means that four top Trump administration officials must provide testimony under oath about their compliance with orders to facilitate the wrongly expelled Maryland man’s return to the United States. They are:
Robert Cerna: Acting field office director of Enforcement and Removal Operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcment (ICE)
Evan Katz: ICE’s assistant director for the Removal Division
Michael Kozak: Michael Kozak, the State Department’s Senior Bureau Official, Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs
Joseph Mazzara: The Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel
Guantánamo
A federal judge today also blocked due-process-free flights from Guantánamo Bay to third-party countries.
“[T]his Court ORDERS that, after taking custody of an alien, Defendants may not cede custody or control in any manner that prevents an alien from receiving the due-process guarantees outlined in the April 18, 2025 preliminary injunction.
More from Reuters.
Win for Public Media
We’ll close tonight’s newsletter with news that isn’t exactly breaking, but you are going to want to read a federal judge’s moving words in defense of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote on Tuesday:
By enjoining the defendants’ efforts to dismantle the plaintiff networks, actions which I perceive to be contrary to the law, I am humbly fulfilling my small part in this very constitutional paradigm—a framework that has propelled the United States to heights of greatness, liberty and prosperity unparalleled in the history of the world for nearly 250 years. If our nation is to thrive for another 250 years, each co-equal branch of government must be willing to courageously exert the authority entrusted to it by our Founders."
The broadcaster has helped send verified information to authoritarian regimes since the age of the Iron Curtain.
Thanks to the judge’s ruling, the Trump administration has been ordered to give the network the more than $12 million in congressionally appropriated dollars that it is owed. Read the ruling in full here.
The wheel of history has come around again, but as before these times of excess will pass,” the opinion states. This sentence in the judge’s decision is so comforting to me tonight. But many have suffered and will suffer from President Trump’s cruel policies.