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Customs agents seized his cellphone after he refused to give password
By Guy Page
On Saturday, January 12 at 3:30 PM, Palestinian-born Green Card holder Mohsen Mahdawi arrived at the Derby Line port of entry driving a white Audi.
He left about seven hours later after an oft-tense encounter with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials with a citation to appear in Vermont criminal court – apparently for possession of illegal drugs found during a search of his car. He left without his Apple cellphone, which border authorities seized from him when he refused to give them the password.
He also left with about $4000 in cash, which he had been carrying in his wallet and two envelopes.
The encounter six years ago became of public interest last week, when the federal government introduced two police reports in its efforts to continue to detain Mahdawi for possible deportation: the 2019 USCPB inspection report and a Windsor (VT) PD report that he sought to buy a sniper rifle and machine gun in 2015. Judge Geoffrey Crawford reviewed both documents and in his order to release Mahdawi downplayed their legal significance.
“The government also points to an incident in January 2019 when Mr. Mahdawi was stopped at the border and found to be carrying drugs. Mr. Mahdawi describes these as prescription medication. He was sent to Diversion through state court and any record of the offense has been expunged.”
Despite Crawford’s dismissal of the drugs as ‘prescription medication,’ the CBP report describes small amounts of LSD, mushrooms with opiates, and meth found in Mahdawi’s car.
Mahdawi, a Windsor County resident and Columbia University activist, was detained and jailed April 14 in Colchester by Department of Homeland Security authorities on the order of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who declared that deporting him is in the strategic interests of the United State due to his Columbia activism. He was freed on bail last week, pending due process review of the government’s case to deport him.
The full CBP report appears below. Some highlights:
Mahdawi said he was coming back from two days in Montreal, visiting a woman he met on a cruise to the Caribbean two weeks before.
Divorced at the time, Mahdawi told CBP he received his green card after marrying an American while he was living in Palestine, where he was born. [Divorce or separation from an American spouse can be, but is typically not, basis for revoking or not renewing green card status.]
As the interview progressed, Mahdawi began to press the authorities to hurry, saying he had an evening appointment. They told him they would take as long as necessary, and asked to see his phone. Mahdawi refused. He threatened to call his lawyer. Due to his refusal, they handcuffed him, put him in a cell, took away his phone, and asked for the passcode. He refused.
Meanwhile other authorities were inspecting the Audi. They found two legitimate prescription bottles from the methylphenidate family, but also personal use amounts of LSD, illegal meth, and mushrooms testing for opiates. After a trip to and from the local hospital (he complained he was feverish and cold, although his temp was normal), Mahdawi was cited by a state trooper. The citation is redacted but in context with the rest of the report appears to be for the drug possession, and Judge Crawford’s release order of Mahdawi notes that the drug charges were expunged from his record.
Mahdawi was released, whereupon he apologized to the CPB authorities and offered to shake their hands.
Copy of January 12, 2019 CBP report and Mohsen Mahdawi’s entry into U.S., below:
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Categories: Border
This case is the epitome of gaslighting.
Mahdawi, and all those who are blindly rallying behind him now, are engaging in a seditious coup to subvert the American people. What the Biden administration and Homeland Secuity chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, are so guilty of is what they are now blaming on the Trump administration and those who are trying to correct the egregious wrongs and clean up the mess of those who had one job and failed to do it.
Yes, well said.
Hey 20 million people came over for dinner, you have no right to ask them to leave your house. Please what’s for lunch?
Lawfare and warfare have changed. See if people invade your country, without permission, they just show up, no fighting or tanks, then you can’t ask them to leave. Apparently, that’s the new rule. While they broke laws. While NGO’s broke laws with taxpayer money, that’s ok. Just because you can’t enter any other country on the planet without proper vetting and paperwork, well, to ask for that, even when it’s the law has to be either racists, fascist or nazism……
This is yet another example of our failed Vermont education system. For this alone they should all be fired. Why aren’t people saying, hey, you can’t break the law, the one that I’m supposed to obey too.
Probably for medical purposes, or he was holding on to them for a friend.
For a transplant holding a green card and living in rural Vermont, he certainly is doing very well in life …. goes on a Caribbean cruise …. drives an Audi …. goes to Montreal for the weekend and comes BACK with over $4000 cash. Nothing to see here?
Oh, he’s working at KFC……nothing to see here, nothing to see. He was holding those for a friend, he didn’t know what they were.
What about that marriage….was there money involved? Arranged shall we say?
NOTHING TO SEE HERE…..nope, nothing to see.
Mahdawi was interviewed on Vermont Public today about his time in prison. Eye roll. He was not convicted and served time in prison. He was detained. Mahdawi now has a cause bigger than himself, according to the VT Public interview. No mention of his possession of drugs coming into the US from Canada.
Now, back here in Vermont we still have four prisoners in jail from the illegal worker roundup from the Berkshire farm. Must be they did not have their green card or visa. The farm owner said they followed all the federal and state laws to hire them. There has to be misinformation some where in this operation. The legal workers need to register with the county sheriff and bring their papers as proof they are legal and this will stop the feds from harassing these much needed farm hands. Now where do you suppose the illegals are hiding????
I was there at the farm that day. BP responded to a call that a group of men with backpacks were seen on foot, emerging from the woods and crossing a field near that farm. BP investigated as it sounded like people crossing the border illegally. And when BP told the men to halt, they all ran which proviked a chase- again, suspicious behavior warranting investugation instead of just saying “hey, we work here”. As far as following “all state and federal laws to hire them” , from my years of being a Spanish translator on VT farms, what I have seen is that the workers purchase fake social security cards/permanent resident cards and present the farmers with either simply images of them they have stored on their cell phones OR sometimes the actual (but fake) hard copies. As long as the farmers have something to use to fill out the w-4s, they don’t ask a lot of questions. But I would imagine that if any farmer had to use E-Verify to actually verify those documents, that would be a different story….
The more disclosed, the more likely he is an asset, an agent, a Langley alumni, a spook. Caught at the border with drugs and not charged? Judge Crawford shrugs and punts? What info was on that phone or rather, who’s numbers listed on the contact list? DC or Virginia area codes perhaps? C’mon man! Anyone else they’d be in jail and this guy is being propped up like a celebrity martyr? The pungent, distinct odor of three letter agency shenanigans.
Glad to see a couple of us are on the same page. Particularly troubling is Judge Crawford’s opinion. He disposes of the drug importation charge by stating that Mahdawi claims the drugs were prescription. However, Border Patrol says they included LSD, methamphetamine, and magic mushrooms. And he disposes of the statements of a gun shop owner and museum docent regarding machine guns and the homicidal desires of Mahdawi as “untruthful”. I expect that any Mahdawi supporters are going to be on someone’s watch list, likely the plan all along.