Appeals court reverses decision that freed pro-Palestinian Columbia activist Mohsen Mahdawi | CNN

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 US 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 orde