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An immigration judge in the United States has ruled against an attempt under President Donald Trump to deport Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student arrested last year for his protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The decision, issued on February 13, became public as part of court filings on Tuesday from Mahdawi’s lawyers.

The filing was submitted to a federal appeals court in New York, which has been considering a challenge from the Trump administration against Mahdawi’s release from custody.

In a public statement released through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Mahdawi thanked the immigration court for its decision, which he framed as a strike in favour of free-speech rights.

“I am grateful to the court for honoring the rule of law and holding the line against the government’s attempts to trample on due process,” Mahdawi said. “This decision is an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice.”

But the ACLU indicated that the immigration court’s decision was made “without prejudice”, a legal term that means the Trump administration could refile its case against Mahdawi.

Raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, Mahdawi is a lawful permanent resident who has lived in Vermont for 10 years.

He enrolled at Columbia, a prestigious Ivy League university, to study philosophy. But he was also a visible member of the campus’s activist community, founding a Palestinian student society alongside fellow student Mahmoud Khalil.

Columbia became a hub for pro-Palestinian protests in 2024, and Trump campaigned for re-election, in part, on cracking down on the demonstrations.

Khalil became the first student protester to be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March of last year, less than three months into Trump’s second term.

Then, on April 14, Mahdawi was arrested at a meeting set up by the government, allegedly to process his citizenship application.

ICE detained him in “direct retaliation for his advocacy of Palestinian rights”, the ACLU said in a statement at the time.

The Trump administration attempted to transfer Mahdawi out of state to Louisiana, but a court order ultimately blocked it from doing so.

Mahdawi was ultimately released on April 30, after US Judge Geoffrey Crawford accused the Trump administration of doing “great harm” to someone who had committed no crime.

Human rights advocates have described the Trump administration’s attempts to deport foreign-born student activists as a campaign to chill free speech.

After his release last year, Mahdawi walked out of the court with both hands in the air, flashing peace signs as supporters greeted him with cheers.

As he spoke, he shared a message for Trump. “I am not afraid of you,” Mahdawi said to Trump.

He also addressed the people of Palestine and sought to dispel perceptions that the student protest movement was anything but peaceful.

“We are pro-peace and antiwar,” Mahdawi explained. “To my people in Palestine: I feel your pain, I see your suffering, and I see freedom, and it is very soon.”

Mahdawi’s arrest comes as part of a wider push by the Trump administration to target visa holders and permanent residents for their pro-Palestine advocacy.

Trump has also pressured top universities to crack down on pro-Palestine protests in the name of combating anti-Semitism. In some cases, the Trump administration has opened investigations into campuses where pro-Palestinian protests were prominent, accusing them of civil rights violations.

Last July, Columbia University entered into a $200m settlement with the Trump administration, with a further $21m given to end a probe into allegations of religious-based harassment.

Hamas pressed President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” to force Israel to stop the “ongoing violations” of the Gaza deal brokered by the United States last October.

The controversial body’s first formal meeting takes place on Thursday in Washington, DC as beleaguered Palestinians in the war-battered territory wait for the second phase of the peace agreement to fully come into force.

“The war of genocide against the Strip is still ongoing – through killing, displacement, siege, and starvation – which has not stopped until this very moment,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a video statement.

More than 600 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since the Hamas-Israel truce deal began on October 10, 2025, according to the Health Ministry.

At least 1,600 others have been wounded in Israeli shelling, gunfire, and air strikes.

‘Lift the siege’

Qassem also called on Trump’s board to facilitate the entry of the committee of technocrats chosen to govern the destroyed Strip – and begin its vast reconstruction efforts to “end the suffering of the population”.

“We call for lifting the siege on Gaza and opening the crossings, and not being content with the partial and minimal opening … and the accompanying violations by the occupation against travelers,” he said.

“We warn against the [Israeli] occupation using this council as a cover to continue the war on Gaza and to prevent reconstruction.”

On Tuesday, Al Jazeera sources reported Israeli artillery shelling of the Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City in the north of the Strip. Israeli tanks also opened fire with heavy machine-gun rounds in the southern city of Khan Younis.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in those attacks.

Continuing ‘obstacles’

Earlier, a wounded person arrived at al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, central Gaza, after an Israeli drone targeted a group of civilians in al-Maghraqa.

Israeli naval gunboats opened fire on fishermen off Gaza coast and detained two Palestinians. The army continues demolitions of residential areas in the north and south of the Strip.

Israel, meanwhile, also continues to severely block the entry of live-saving aid and the exit of thousands of sick and wounded people from seeking medical care abroad.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said on Monday less than 60 percent of crucial aid consignments from Egypt are being allowed inside Gaza.

“Humanitarian movements that require coordination with Israeli authorities also continue to face obstacles… Our teams on the ground are engaging with the authorities to clarify the constraints and seek a resolution so that our operations can move forward,” Dujarric said.

Since Trump launched his “Board of Peace” at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January at least 19 countries have signed its founding charter.

The board, of which Trump is the chairman, was initially designed to oversee the Gaza truce and the territory’s reconstruction.

China’s annual gala on Lunar New Year’s Eve has showcased Beijing’s giant leap in technology as humanoid robots took centre stage to perform a joint martial arts routine featuring several firsts.

China’s Spring Festival Gala, which aired on Monday on state broadcaster CGTN, has gone viral, drawing nearly half a million views on YouTube.

Two dozen humanoid robots performed the world’s first continuous freestyle table-vaulting parkour, the first aerial flip, continuous single-leg flips, a two-step wall-assisted backflip, and the first 7.5-rotation Airflare grand spin, CGTN reported.

The performance marked a stark contrast with last year’s show, when robots twirled handkerchiefs and performed simple movements.

Four firms – Unitree, Magiclab, Galbot, and Noetix – partnered with the gala in deals reportedly worth about 100 million yuan ($14m), according to the South China Morning Post.

The first robots to appear were Noetix’s Bumi models, who performed a comedy sketch. Unitree’s robots later exhibited martial arts alongside child artists, including backflips and trampoline jumps, followed by Magiclab’s humanoids in a musical segment.

Ramesh Srinivasan, an artificial intelligence policy specialist and lecturer at the University of California (UCLA), told Al Jazeera that Beijing is sending a clear “statement” about its capabilities to the world, and to its US rivals specifically.

The performance highlighted China’s rapid progress in humanoid robotics, an area that sees its longer-term potential in industrial and agricultural applications as the country’s population steadily declines.

It comes weeks since US tech mogul Elon Musk told his first-ever Davos World Economic Forum that he is confident humanoid robots will be sold to the public by the end of next year, and that there will soon be more robots than people.

‘What is this going to mean?’

These developments raise important questions.

“What happens when AI is in these robotic forms?” Srinivasan said. “What is this going to mean for working-class people economically? What about the emergence of more and more humanoid robots on the battlefield?”

This technology will change “our futures, economically, militarily and even personally, as people turn to robots and AI as therapists, companions and even potential mates”, he added.

The ultimate questions, Srinivasan said, are: “Do we really want this?”, and “What are the appropriate domains for these humanoid robots and domains that are inappropriate for us?”.

“For me, it’s really about re-investing in the human condition and the ways we want to work with technologies to have a flourishing future,” he said.