A Palestinian man who led peaceful protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza as a student at Columbia University, and was recently detained during an interview about finalising his US citizenship, has said he’s “in good hands” at the Vermont prison where he is being held.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident of the United States, was arrested on April 14 in Colchester, Vermont. He met on Monday with US Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, a Democrat.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has been cracking down on pro-Palestine activities. In the first week of his presidency, Trump pledged to deport students who joined protests against Israel’s war on Gaza that swept US university campuses last year.

“I’m staying positive by reassuring myself in the ability of justice and the deep belief of democracy,” Mahdawi said in Welch’s video posted on X. “This is the reason I wanted to become a citizen of this country, because I believe in the principles of this country.”

Welch’s office said Mahdawi was being detained at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St Albans, Vermont. His case is scheduled for a status conference on Wednesday. His lawyers have called for his release.

The US Justice Department has not said why he’s being detained. The New York Times reported April 15 that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote a memo that says Mahdawi’s activities could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process. Rubio did not provide any evidence of this.

Rubio has cited a rarely used statute to justify the deportation of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. It gives the US power to deport those who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

Khalil says he is a political prisoner. He also missed the birth of his son after being refused temporary release to attend the birth, his wife Noor Abdalla said on Monday.

Abdalla said that she gave birth to the couple’s first child in New York without Khalil present after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made the “purposeful decision” to make her family suffer.

An immigration judge ruled April 11 that Khalil can be forced out of the country as a national security risk, after lawyers argued the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. His lawyers plan to appeal.

A US immigration judge in the state of Louisiana ruled last week that Khalil, who was detained last month, can be deported – setting a precedent for the administration to proceed with its efforts to deport dissenting foreign students, despite them being in the country legally and not being charged with any crime.

Trump has also threatened to halt federal funding for schools, colleges, and universities if they allow what he called “illegal protests”.

In other high-profile cases, immigration officers have detained and sought to deport Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student from Turkiye, and Columbia student Yunseo Chung, who is a US permanent resident originally from South Korea.