from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, December 22.

There have been so many immigration, detention, and deportation stories this year,

raising multiple legal and constitutional questions.

We will talk now with the subject of one of the biggest.

Mosen Madawi was a Columbia University senior and a legal permanent resident of the United States

when he was detained by ICE early this year.

Originally from the West Bank, Madawi co-founded the Palestinian Student Union

at Columbia. He was a leader in the pro-Palestinian protests at the school. He was also president

of the Columbia University Buddhist Association. Madhavi was detained in April when he showed up

as scheduled to take his citizenship exam.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself published an alleged reason they wanted to deport Madawi. Rubio said, quote, the activities and presence of Madawi in the United States

undermines U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism, unquote, and that Madawi's involvement in the Columbia protest could, quote,

potentially undermine the peace process underway in the Middle East. The grounds for his detention,

as claimed by the government, were based on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

The act says, an alien whose presence are activities in the United States,

the Secretary of State, has reasonable grounds to believe would have potential serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable. That's the central quote from that law that they

were citing. So Madawi went to federal court seeking to be released in a case now known as

Madawi versus Trump. And the court did release him in time to attend graduation at Columbia in May. The

student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, says he got a standing ovation from his graduating classmates.

The status of Mosin Madawi's case right now is apparently this. The district court judge,

Jeffrey Crawford, who released him on bail, compared his detention to the

red scare of the McCarthy era. His ruling said Madawi had provided enough evidence that his First

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