In April, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University and a legal permanent resident.

In the preceding months, Mahdawi had been targeted by Zionist groups like Canary Mission and Betar, which compiled public dossiers to accuse him of anti-semitism for attending pro-Palestine protests –some dating back a year or more.

Over the past months, several other students –including Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and Zainab Hakim– have also been detained under vague or selectively enforced grounds.

They all have Muslim or Arab names. Some wear hijab. All are immigrants or international students. And none are white.

While thousands across the US have joined campus protests denouncing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the fact that the arrests have disproportionately targeted the same group suggests this is no coincidence.

ICE is a federal agency under the Department of Homeland Security, responsible for enforcing immigration laws –including detaining and removing those deemed to have violated their visa or status.

While its stated mission focuses on national security and border control, in practice, ICE operates with sweeping discretion and no oversight, often blurring the line between civil enforcement and political repression.

For human rights attorney Maria Kari, ICE’s operations amount to ideological policing disguised as immigration control, and that, she says, should concern all Americans.

Kari also represents Momodou Taal, a Black British Muslim PhD student at Cornell University, whose visa was recently revoked and who now faces deportation over his advocacy for Palestinian human rights.

Here, Kari lays bare how ICE has weaponised immigration enforcement to punish political dissent, who is being singled out, and why the legal system may no longer offer protection.

Edited excerpts:

TRT WORLD: ICE appears to be selecting individuals from among tens of thousands of campus protesters, with no public criteria. From a legal perspective, how much discretion does ICE have in deciding whom to arrest? Is there any formal framework or rulebook guiding their operations, or are these arrests essentially left to agent-by-agent judgment?

Maria Kari: ICE derives its authority primarily from the Immigration + Nationality Act, which gives the Department of Homeland Security broad discretion to enforce immigration laws. Within this framework, ICE has significant leeway to initiate enforcement actions, including investigating visa violations or overstays. However, this discretion is not unlimited. ICE must still conform to constitutional protections. It cannot act in a way that is arbitrary, discriminatory or retaliatory.

For instance, under Biden, places of worship and schools were protected from ICE activity. That's no longer the case. Also, there's no publicly binding rulebook governing how ICE selects individuals for enforcement, resulting in a rather opaque agency with all too much power.

In my opinion, this level of unchecked power, particularly when it's weaponised against disfavoured minority groups, is precisely what enables the abuse we're seeing now.

In some of these cases, students were detained months after participating in protests, with footage or activity from nearly a year ago cited as justification. Is it lawful for ICE to retroactively examine someone's political activity to start visa investigations or arrests?

MK: This (Trump) administration and certain members of Congress have legitimised and emboldened extremist Zionist groups like Betar US, who are playing a disturbing role in the targeting of pro-Palestinian activists. These groups are acting as ideological vigilantes who are gathering, doxxing and reporting students to authorities for nothing more than exercising their constitutional rights. Betar put a target on the back of folks like Khalil and Ozturk.

So it's clear: these groups are not just feeding the feds ammunition to criminalise any perceived political dissent, they're working hand in hand to silence pro-Palestinian speech and punish students of colour, especially Muslims, under the pretence of national security.

The legality of ICE's actions has become almost irrelevant because of the way this administration continues to thumb its nose at the rule of law, generally.

Irrespective of who is in the White House, ICE is emboldened to act extrajudicially. They are allowed to lie to you, lie to gain entry to your home, to surveil folks, to target and detain individuals in a way that shocks the conscience.

What legal protections, if any, exist for international or immigrant students engaging in peaceful protest or political speech? Can ICE enforcement actions based on such activities be challenged as violations of constitutional rights?

MK: International and immigrant students do not check their constitutional rights at the border. Peaceful protest and political speech are protected activities that they can engage in. ICE punishing them for it can and must be challenged as a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

International and immigrant students also have every right to turn to US courts for redress. The Constitution guarantees them access to the judiciary when their rights are trampled, no matter their immigration status.

And, international and immigrant students also have the right to be free from unfair, arbitrary detention and are entitled to the full protection of due process under the 5th Amendment, including the right to a fair hearing, legal representation, and to challenge government action in court.

However, this administration is willfully defying the letter of the law and even disregarding judicial orders, turning constitutional guarantees into empty promises –just words on paper– for those who dare to dissent.

Given that a significant portion of the arrested students so far have all been Muslim, is there legal ground to argue that these detentions amount to religious or racial discrimination, or Islamophobic? And if so, what recourse exists under civil rights or immigration law?

MK: The arrests and detentions we're seeing are a glaring manifestation of institutional Islamophobia and racial discrimination.

Students who are being targeted for arrest - and students who are being targeted by extremist hate groups like Betar and Canary Mission are all Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Black. Take Momodou Taal (for instance)…hunted down like an animal by the immigration Gestapo for his advocacy for Palestinian human rights.

Arguing Islamophobia as part of the legal analysis is critical right now, based on the ruling by an immigration judge who denied Rumeysa Ozturk bond because, according to the judge, she was a "danger" to American society. Just over an op-ed.

If this is not Islamophobia and xenophobia and Palestine-phobia, then what is? Would a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed woman be called a societal threat for political speech? This is America now. And, this is what the Islamophobia factory looks like when it's running at full throttle.

We're seeing an alarming escalation from ideological detentions to mass visa revocations based on vague or unproven claims. What do you make of this shift in US policy toward international students and peaceful activists, and how does it hold up legally and constitutionally?

MK: The first round of arrests and detentions we saw were ideological. Folks like Khalil, Ozturk and Taal were targeted for simply exercising their First Amendment rights through peaceful protest, public commentary, campus activism, and op-ed writing. Their detention –carried out by officers in plainclothes– has had a chilling effect on foreign nationals and Americans alike.

The new round of targeting by the Department of State and ICE is different. They're aggressively targeting international students for visa revocation, termination of their status and removal.

DOS has revoked hundreds of student visas and announced a Catch and Revoke program that uses AI-assisted reviews to screen social media posts of student visa holders. This is truly unprecedented.