A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a lower court ruling that freed Columbia student and pro-Palestinian protester Mohsen Mahdawi from ICE custody.A Second Circuit panel, made up of one George W. Bush judge and two Donald Trump first-term appointees, determined that Mahdawi should not have been released from ICE custody in 2025. They argued that the Vermont-based federal judge that made the initial ruling lacked jurisdiction to do so.The panel concluded that only an immigration court could oversee Mahdawi’s detention challenge, as the case was inextricably linked to his deportation suit.“Today’s decision is a grave setback, although I am confident justice will ultimately prevail,” Mahdawi said in a statement provided by the American Civil Liberties Union. “It reflects a dangerous failure under political pressure, one that risks turning the federal courts into instruments of politics rather than guardians of constitutional freedom.”Mahdawi was arrested by masked agents in April 2025 during his scheduled citizenship interview. He later told ABC News that he felt the appointment was a “trap.”His detention was the result of an aggressive pressure campaign fronted by State Secretary Marco Rubio to push the West Bank refugee out of the country. Rubio at one point argued that Mahdawi’s presence in the U.S. could “potentially undermine” U.S. foreign policy on the basis that his pro-Palestinian advocacy could create “adverse foreign policy consequences.”Mahdawi grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, where most of his family remains. He has been outspoken about his experiences growing up in the occupied region, describing the murders of his friends and loved ones by Israeli forces, and the violence he experienced when he was shot in the leg by an Israeli soldier at the age of 15.He co-founded Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union alongside detained (and freed) peer Mahmoud Khalil, another legal U.S. permanent resident who was shipped to an ICE center in Louisiana last year shortly after being ripped away from his pregnant wife by plainclothes ICE agents. U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford in Vermont, who released Mahdawi after two weeks’ detention last year, ruled at the time that the 35-year-old enjoyed the same First Amendment rights as U.S. citizens. In Trump’s America, that is apparently not the case.“By weakening the First Amendment and creating different tiers of rights for citizens and non-citizens, this ruling hands the government a dangerous power: the power to intimidate, censor, and punish dissent without meaningful restraint,” Mahdawi’s Tuesday statement continued. “But I still have faith that the full court will correct the legal error and restore the constitutional principles that protect all people equally. This struggle continues for Palestine, for dignity and equality everywhere, and for the democratic promise of freedom that must belong to us all; until Palestine is free.”This story has been updated.