Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
ST. ALBANS — A mass of demonstrators gathered outside Northwest State Correctional Facility on a rainy early evening last week, holding up Palestinian flags in the biting wind.
Among the sea of flags was an American one emblazoned with a slogan: “When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.”
The dozens there at the St. Albans prison on April 16 had come to protest the detention of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student and Vermont resident detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Colchester earlier that week.
Mahdawi, a Palestinian who’s held a green card since 2015, cofounded Columbia’s Palestinian Student Union. Another cofounder, Mahmoud Khalil, was arrested by ICE officers in New York City on March 7 and is being held at a Louisiana processing center. Both men were involved with student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Bill Marks, who described himself as a lifelong activist, and his dog, Scooter, were in St. Albans that day to protest the detention of a fellow Vermont resident.
“I realize I’ve been in Vermont my whole life, over 50 years, and I came here because it was a sanctuary,” Marks said. “This guy in Washington is violating my sanctuary by violating other people here. If they’re not safe, I’m not safe.”
Mahdawi’s arrest is the most recent in a Trump administration trend of targeting college students critical of the ongoing war in Palestine. On the same day of Mahdawi’s arrest, a hearing for Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk was taking place at the federal court in Burlington, where hundreds of protestors gathered outside to demand her release.
Öztürk was taken off the street by masked plainclothes officers in Somerville, Massachusetts, then handcuffed and placed into an unmarked car. She’s been held at another ICE facility in Louisiana, but federal Judge William Sessions ordered the government to transfer Öztürk for a May 9 bail hearing back to Vermont, where she had briefly been detained.
Like Khalil and Mahdawi, Öztürk has not been charged with a crime, but federal authorities concluded that she engaged in activities in support of Hamas — likely related to an op-ed she co-wrote last March criticizing Tufts for not sanctioning Israel over the war.
“I think it’s unfair that people always try to say supporting the Palestinians is the same as supporting Hamas, and that’s wrong,” said Paula Gamache, a semi-retired veterinarian from St. Albans. “They hide behind it just like they hide behind deporting criminals.”
Gamache feels now is the time for people to act against moves like the detentions. “People keep saying, ‘Oh, this is the moment.’ Well, this really is the moment, you know. There were times when we went to war with Iraq — I protested that too — but that doesn’t seem near as bad as our situation is now,” she said.
Mahdawi was going to the field office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Colchester for a routine citizenship interview at 11 a.m. April 14. Plainclothes men handcuffed him and put him into an unmarked black vehicle around noon.
According to VTDigger, Mahdawi’s lawyers filed a petition alleging unlawful detention in Vermont, resulting in Sessions issuing a temporary order that Mahdawi not be removed from the state or the U.S. pending further orders. Mahdawi has been held at the correctional facility in St. Albans, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch’s office told the Associated Press.
Katie Robinson, who grew up in Warren, lives in Burlington and works for a nonprofit in Richmond, feels it is becoming increasingly difficult to turn what she sees as a blind eye to the administration’s immigration crackdown.
“I feel like it’s really easy in Vermont to feel like the things that we’re seeing happening in other places around the country are not going to come and happen here,” Robinson said.
“The fact that this is happening 30 minutes from where I live is not something I can ignore. I feel like it’s really easy to feel removed from things that are happening farther away, but they just keep getting closer and closer,” she said. “I just felt more called to come here today than I have. It just hit me harder.”
One demonstrator who identified herself only as Shannon, a mom of three, took issue with claims that the pro-Palestinian movement is antisemitic. From her perspective as a Jewish person, she said, it is not.
Demonstrators also noted concerns about how the recent spate of detentions reflect changes in the judicial system.
Lorraine Halpin-Zaloom from Essex Junction said she especially worries about due process.
“I’m really concerned about the erosion of our constitution and what we’re facing,” she said. “We’re in the midst of what it was like in Germany before fascism fully took over.”
Without due process, she said, “America is not America anymore.”
Mahdawi is set to appear in federal court in Burlington on April 23 for a hearing on his argument that he was unlawfully detained.