COLCHESTER, Vt. — A Columbia University student activist with ties to the Upper Valley was taken into custody by hooded federal agents at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office on Monday.

Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, is the latest college student ensnared in the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreigners who were involved in pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the country following the start of the Israel-Hamas war in late 2023.

A permanent U.S. resident, or green card holder, since 2014, Mahdawi was led out of the office in handcuffs and placed in the back of an unmarked SUV shortly before noon. Several other unmarked vehicles followed the vehicle out of the parking lot.

Federal authorities at the Colchester, Vt., office refused to say where Mahdawi, a Palestinian who moved to the U.S. more than a decade ago, was headed. Later in the day, immigration lawyers working on Mahdawi’s behalf posted on social media that they had successfully petitioned a court for a temporary restraining order to keep him in Vermont.

On Monday, Mahdawi talked with the Valley News less than two hours before he was taken into custody. He suspected the federal government was targeting him for his activism and exercising his right to free speech, he said.

“I am part of the peaceful anti-war movement,” he said. “I have done nothing wrong.”

Mahdawi, who owns property in West Fairlee and lived full-time in the Upper Valley before starting at Columbia in 2021, is the first person the Trump administration has seized in Vermont for allegedly participating in antisemitic campus activities.

During his years in the Upper Valley, which he still visits frequently, Mahdawi was invited to speak at churches and adult education classes about growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank.

On Monday afternoon, Vermont’s congressional delegation — Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch and Rep. Becca Balint — issued a statement calling for Mahdawi to be “immediately released from detention.”

They pointed out that Mahdawi is a legal U.S. resident. “This is immoral, inhuman, and illegal,” the delegation stated.

In his interview with the Valley News, Mahdawi talked about how he ended up at the Immigration Services Office in northern Vermont on Monday morning.

He’s been working on getting his U.S. citizenship for several years. Last month, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, notified him that he must show up at its Vermont office on Monday for a final interview.

Although he was fairly certain it was a ruse, Mahdawi said his failure to appear would likely end any chance of him gaining citizenship.

Before heading to Immigration Services with his immigration attorney, Mahdawi met with a half dozen supporters in the lobby at a nearby Hampton Inn.

“I’m hoping it’s anti-climatic,” said state Sen. Becca White, of Hartford, before hugging Mahdawi as he headed off to Immigration Services.

White and a few others waited in the large parking lot outside the federal office.

The next time they saw their friend, he was in handcuffs.

At around 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, White wrote on social media that Mahdawi was being taken to Vermont’s Northwest Correctional Facility in Swanton, Vt.

In 2020 Valley News interviews for a two-part series about his journey to the U.S., Mahdawi talked about his favorite uncle and a 13-year-old friend who were both killed by Israeli soldiers.

Living in a West Bank refugee camp puts “you at the mercy of 18-year-old Israeli soldiers about whether you can leave or not,” he told the Valley News in 2020.

He recalled the time that his infant brother developed a high fever.

“My father needed to take him to the hospital outside the camp, but the soldiers wouldn’t let him go,” Mahdawi said.

His brother never fully recovered. Mohammad died when he was 8.

Next month, Mahdawi is scheduled to graduate from Columbia, where he’s majored in philosophy.