Mohammed Abushanab, a 27-year-old Palestinian asylum-seeker who fled persecution by the Israeli military, has finally been released from detention, after being incarcerated by ICE for 20 months.
While living near the Israeli border in the West Bank, Abushanab was repeatedly harassed and detained, suffering physical abuse during one detention. He left his home after Israeli soldiers came onto his land and shot bullets near him.
In February 2025, a judge granted Abushanab withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), but he was not released.
“We are thrilled that Mr. Abushanab was released from ICE custody,” said Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) attorney Kayla Vinson in a statement. “We are also horrified by ICE’s insistence on keeping him in a cage, including for more than a year after he was granted humanitarian relief. Without this court order, ICE would have continued to do so. Mr. Abushanab’s suffering and separation from his loved ones was unnecessary and inhumane. We are glad that the federal district court brought an end to that injustice.”
Dr. Rumeysa Öztürk, the Tufts doctoral student who was targeted and detained by the Trump administration for co-authoring a pro-BDS editorial in her school paper, is returning to Turkey.
“After 13 years of dedicated study, I am very proud to have completed my Ph.D. and to return home on my own timeline,” said Öztürk, in a statement released through the ACLU. “The time stolen from me by the U.S. government belongs not just to me, but to the children and youth I have dedicated my life to advocating for. With them in mind, I am choosing to return home as planned to continue my career as a woman scholar without losing more time to the state-imposed violence and hostility I have experienced in the United States – all for nothing more than co-signing an op-ed advocating for Palestinian rights.
“As I start the next chapter of my life, I stand firmly in solidarity with academic communities in the U.S. and elsewhere who live in fear for nothing more than their scholarship, and with other scholars punished for their courageous advocacy for Palestine,” she continued. “I invite all universities to do better about listening and valuing all of their students as equal community members, rather than favoring some and silencing others. And I invite everyone to recognize the privilege it is for any country to host international scholars, and the hole that is left in our society when that privilege is lost.”
Hayam El Gamal, who has been detained with her children for more than 10 months, following the arrest of her then-husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, for a fatal firebombing attack in Colorado last June, has released a statement through her lawyers:
“I am a mother with five children who has been detained behind the gates of Dilley for over 10 months. My kids, 2 of whom are 5 years old, have been struggling to live in a place that isn’t suitable for such long periods of time. We have been suffering from terrible food, inhuman living conditions and medical neglect for almost a year.”
“I have a weird bump in my chest that has been causing me pain for over three month. I do not know what it is and its causing me stress and anxiety. I have been begging them to tell me what’s wrong with me. I have explained that my family has a history of cancer patients and that I am really worried. I have cried and explained that my kids have no one else to take care of them. But yet, all i was given was ibuprofen and painkillers for almost 3 months. For almost 3 months no one ran any meaningful tests or made any effort to figure out what my sickness is. No one cared until I had unbearable pain and came in very severe pain and needed to be transported to the ER. And although the ER doctors have determined that I need to be seen by specialists and have more tests, not a single person followed up or cared until I went to them again complaining from the pain. And now I am still detained, with pain that is worsening everyday while no one cares at all.
“This place is a prison. We didn’t do anything to deserve this. Children shouldn’t be punished for their parents’ actions. Please treat us as an innocent family. We will follow the law just as we have been doing our entire lives. We are asking for only one thing: our freedom. Freedom is a human right, and we are begging you to help us gain ours back.”
The Trump administration fired two judges for blocking the deportation of Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi.
The New York Times reported that Roopal Patel and Nina Froes have joined over 100 judges fired by the Trump administration during his second term.
Froes told the paper that she “fully expected” to be fired amid the President’s mass dismissal of immigration judges.
“It was a pressure I at least tried to actively resist,” said Froes. “All people in the United States are entitled to due process, and everyone deserves to have their cases adjudicated fully and fairly.”
Leqaa Kordia was interviewed by reporter Sam Judy for Mondoweiss. Kordia was finally released last month, after spending a year in detention over her Palestine advocacy.
“As a Palestinian, I have the right to live with dignity, to live with freedom, to live with justice,” she told Judy. “Calling for the end of genocide shouldn’t be a question. It shouldn’t be,’Is that right or wrong?’ Every human being should be calling for an end to genocide.”
“Our very existence is being questioned,” Kordia continued. “For my entire life as a Palestinian, I live just to prove or just to try to exist. It’s almost like we’re begging the people of the world just to see us as human beings. I grew up as a Palestinian being used to my voice being silenced, seeing other Palestinian voices being silenced, hearing about people who advocate for Palestine or call for the Palestinian voice being silenced. So it’s not a new thing, unfortunately. It’s sad, and it hurts me to say that I’m used to this. I don’t want to be used to this. I don’t want to be just living and that’s it. I want to live with freedom and dignity and justice as a Palestinian.”
Further Reading
- NBC News: The Strokes condemn U.S. foreign intervention on Coachella stage
- Center Square: Illinois law at center of normal township BDS referendum
- Harvard Crimson: CAIR Engaged Harvard in Back-and-Forth Over Adoption of IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
- ‘I’ve become stronger:’ Leqaa Kordia on life after ICE detention
