A unanimous decision from the 2nd Circuit just overturned a lower court order for a pro-Hamas activist, allowing ICE to re-arrest Mohsen Mahdawi and deport him.
The 2nd Circuit ruled that the lower court judge, an Obama appointee, “overstepped his authority by intervening in Mahdawi’s case before it had moved fully through the immigration court system.”
Here’s more from the AP:
A federal appeals panel has reversed a lower court decision ordering the release of pro-Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi, opening the door to the re-arrest of a student protest organizer whom the Trump administration has spent more than a year trying to deport.
Tuesday’s ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York overturns a previous decision by a federal judge in Vermont, which likened the government’s efforts to expel him and other activists to McCarthyist repression.
In their unanimous decision, the panel found that the judge had overstepped his authority by intervening in Mahdawi’s case before it had moved fully through the immigration court system.
The ruling mirrors a separate appellate panel’s decision earlier this year against Mahmoud Khalil, a former classmate of Mahdawi’s at Columbia University.
As with the ruling against Khalil, the appeals court did not weigh in on the merits of Mahdawi’s claim that he was unconstitutionally targeted for criticizing Israel. He can seek a review from the federal courts over those claims once he has exhausted his options in the immigration courts, the panel wrote.
Mahdawi, 35, is currently appealing an order of removal issued against him in immigration court. An emailed inquiry to his attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union was not immediately returned.
Yeah I bet they didn’t respond. I’d tell you who the judges were, but the AP didn’t list then and the link in their article is broken because they are morons.
UPDATE: The judges were Justices Livingston (George W. Bush appointee), Nardini (Trump appointee) and Menashi, (Trump appointee). In case you wanted to know.