Court reinstates deportation proceedings against pro-Palestinian student Mohsen Mahdawi
Pro-Palestinian activists rally for Mohsen Mahdawi and protest against deportations outside of ICE Headquarters on April 15, 2025, in New York City. Mohsen Mahdawi, an organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year at Columbia University, was detained by the Department of Homeland Security during his naturalization interview in Vermont on Monday. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)
The Board of Immigration Appeals has reinstated deportation proceedings against pro-Palestinian student Mohsen Mahdawi, according to a court filing from his attorneys.
In February, Judge Nina Froes dropped the deportation case against the Columbia University student, ruling in part that the Department of Homeland Security failed to authenticate a memo allegedly signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming Mahdawi posed a threat to United States foreign policy.
The Trump administration appealed that decision and the BIA, which skews conservative, overturned Froes’ decision.
he move reinstates deportation proceedings against Mahdawi, but it will be overseen by a different judge after Froes was terminated from her position. Her firing comes as critics of the Trump administration say it has sought to reshape immigration courts by replacing immigration judges in an attempt to ramp up deportations.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Mahdawi’s arrest is still being challenged in federal court, so the government can’t deport him for the moment, the ACLU said. He was detained in April 2025 when he arrived at his citizenship interview.
“The government continues to weaponize the immigration system to silence dissent,” Mahdawi said in a statement. “But it cannot erase the Constitution or the First Amendment, which protects free speech for all. The government is trying to punish and deport me, a stateless Palestinian refugee from the occupied West Bank, because it opposes my peaceful advocacy for human dignity and equal rights for Palestinians. But I remain unafraid and faithful that justice will prevail in America and in Palestine.”
Arguing for his detainment last spring, lawyers for the Trump administration pointed to a 2015 FBI investigation, in which a gun shop owner alleged that Mahdawi had claimed to have built machine guns in the West Bank to kill Jews.
However, the FBI closed that investigation and Mahdawi was never charged with any crime, a point a federal judge highlighted when he ordered Mahdawi’s release in May 2025.
In this U.S. Coast Guard handout, the Coast Guard investigates aircraft wreckage on the Potomac River on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles/ U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday presented a cockpit visual simulation demonstrating what contributed to the deadly mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines jet near Washington, D.C., last year.
The simulation indicates it was very difficult for both aircraft to see each other before the January 2025 crash that occurred as the jet was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people, according to the NTSB.
The first video shows the last three minutes before the collision from the viewpoint of the right seat of the helicopter.
Around 8:46:15, a magenta circle with a label “Flight 5342” appears just above the horizon on the right side of the upper portion of the screen. The label “Flight 5342” fades out about 8:46:35. The magenta circle tracks the lights of Flight 5342 and remains visible until the airplane becomes visually recognizable about a minute later.
After a Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System warning indicated in the transcript, the local controller on the ATC recording is heard asking the pilots if they have the CRJ (Flight 5342) in sight and the pilots confirm they do. It remains unclear what they thought they had in sight. There was only one controller working both the helicopter and plane traffic, the NTSB said.
The simulation screen goes black at the moment of the collision.
The second animation shows the viewpoint of pilots from Flight 5342 as the plane approaches the runway to land. According to the cockpit voice recorder transcript shared by the NTSB, the last words about one second before the crash from both the first officer and the captain were “oh” and “ohhh ohhhh” as the animation shows the helicopter colliding with the plane.
About 90% of wreckage from both aircraft was recovered by the NTSB.
A third animationshows what the local controller from the DCA tower saw at the time of the crash as they were handling the air traffic and issuing instructions. Based on the recordings, the NTSB said Flight 5342 was not warned by the controller of the nearby helicopter at any point. A conflict alert came 26 seconds before the collision between the two aircraft as they were 1.6 miles apart, according to the NTSB.
According to the NTSB, the local tower said they were concerned about the close proximity of the helicopter and Flight 5342.
“This coupled with the conflict alert that was active at the time, the controller should have issued a safety alert, which would have included updated traffic advisory information and an alternate course of action if feasible, neither were done. In this case, had a safety alert been issued, it would have increased the situation awareness of both crews and alerted them of their closing proximity to one another. Additionally, a timely safety alert may have allowed action to be taken by one or both crews to avoid avert the collision,” NTSB investigator Brian Soper said at the hearing.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy also said that a $400 GPS device known as ADSB-In could have prevented the DCA crash. The NTSB has recommended ADSB-In be required in aircraft 17 times since 2006, but the FAA has repeatedly disregarded the recommendation, she said.
The system would have alerted the American Airlines crew 59 seconds before the crash that they were going to collide, and the helicopter crew would have been alerted 48 seconds before the crash, the NTSB chair said. The Army has since installed the system.
DCA controller overwhelmed
The controller working the night of the crash was handling both helicopter and plane traffic and had been doing so for four hours, NTSB investigators said.
A human behavior investigator said the controller’s mental awareness had diminished over time. He should have given a definitive warning of the impending collision and he should have given clear avoidance instructions, the investigator said.
NTSB investigators said the last communication between the helicopter and the controller where they asked the pilot if they have the AA5342 in sight was “not a safety alert by definition, but it was an attempt to de-conflict.”
Ninety seconds before the collision, the local controller working in the tower became overwhelmed as he was handling aircraft both on ground and in the air. On the night of the collision, the controller was working two controller positions. This is a routine practice which is usually done later at night when the aircraft volume goes down.
The NTSB said, “keeping the local control and helicopter control positions combined on the night of the accident, increased the local controller’s workload and reduced his situation awareness.”
Investigators said the controller could have asked for the positions to be decombined because of being overwhelmed, but it would have taken at least a couple of minutes before anyone else could take over. Additionally, the assistant local controller and the supervisor overseeing operations at the time could have served as an extra set of eyes to help the local controller.
However, Homendy revealed that at the time, the assistant controller was writing down information on helicopters and the supervisor did not exhibit situational awareness as they learned during the interview that the supervisor only recalled one helicopter in the area at the time when there were five.
Following the crash, the NTSB issued recommendations for better training to be provided for controllers so they can recognize safety issues and threats in the environment.
NTSB chair’s concerns
Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Chair Homendy said she fears that some of the agency’s safety recommendations, which will be issued at the conclusion of the hearing, may once again go unimplemented.
“Of course I’m concerned. We have 300 aviation recommendations that still haven’t been implemented. Those recommendations were issued because somebody died or was injured, and they have not been implemented yet. So here we are again,” Homendy told ABC News.
“So yes, at the end of this, I am concerned that we’re going to issue recommendations and that they won’t be implemented,” Homendy said. “I can tell you, and anyone who knows me knows I vigorously advocate for the implementation of our recommendations. I don’t care when it is. Could be 50 years later, as I did with positive train control, and I will not hold back on these.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, NTSB investigators will present their investigative findings to board members and the public. NTSB board members, including Homendy, will then question investigators and the parties to the investigation.
At the end of the hearing, the board members will vote on the probable cause of the crash and the agency’s safety recommendations. The NTSB can only make recommendations and does not have the authority to enforce them, therefore they are not always adopted.
Though a formal final report will be released two weeks after the hearing, this hearing will mark the end of what Homendy described as “one of the most complex investigations” conducted by the agency, which they had aimed to conclude by the first anniversary of the mid-air collision.
Homendy told ABC News the investigation “was not easy and it was definitely not straightforward.”
“We will start in one direction and then take it in a different direction, depending on what we’re finding, and then we’ll exclude things that didn’t have anything to do with the investigation. But we have to do our due diligence to make sure that we’re tracking all of that down, all that evidence to support that it wasn’t a factor, while also looking at the issues that were,” Homendy said.
Homendy said the helicopter altimeter discrepancy is what surprised her the most in this investigation.
“The altimeters I did not see coming, that we would have some problems with how the altimeters were reading,” Homendy said.
During last year’s three-day investigative hearing, investigators said they found discrepancies in the altitude data shown on radio and barometric altimeters on Army helicopters after conducting test flights following January’s accident.
It is likely that the helicopter crew did not know their true altitude due to notoriously faulty altimeters inside this series of Black Hawks, according to the investigation. At their closest points, helicopters and planes flew within 75 feet of each other near DCA, an astonishingly close number. During the hearings, the NTSB was told Army Black Hawks can often have wrong readings and a margin of error of +-200 feet.
Another key focus of Tuesday’s hearing is the close proximity of the helicopter route to the runways at Reagan National Airport. According to the NTSB, which cited FAA surveillance data, there were over 15,000 close-proximity events between helicopters and commercial aircraft at DCA between October 2021 and December 2024.
Homendy said warnings about the close proximity were raised by people, but they were ignored.
“Years ago, that hot spot was identified and [people] repeatedly tried to say that the helicopter route needed to be moved, and nobody listened. It was like the ultimate in government bureaucracy,” Homendy said.
“They were completely ignored. Told it couldn’t be done, not responded to, said it would probably be too political. Those are quotes from our interviews, but they went nowhere.”
At last year’s hearing, FAA officials cited “bureaucratic process” as a deterrent to addressing these issues.
Other topics expected to be discussed include the approval of helicopter routes near DCA, the experience level of the air traffic controllers working in the tower at the time of the crash, the visibility study, and the testing of the barometric altimeters.
When asked what stays with her from this investigation, Homendy pointed to a personal item recovered with the wreckage.
“In the hangar, we had the Black Hawk laid out. We had the wreckage laid out for 5342 and on the side next to 5342 there were some personal effects, and a lot of people mentioned different things, but every time I passed, there was a brown teddy bear, just eight inches maybe, and it was muddy and dried mud, dried water, and I just kept looking at the teddy bear, and that’s the thing that sticks with me,” Homendy said.
A billboard in Times Square calls for the release of the Epstein Files on July 23, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice on Thursday released three previously withheld FBI interview reports from 2019 related to a woman who made uncorroborated allegations that she was abused by Donald Trump in the 1980s, when she was a minor.
In a statement on social media, the Department of Justice said the interview summaries — known as FBI 302 reports — were initially withheld from the January release of millions of pages of DOJ documents related to Jeffrey Epstein because they were believed to be duplicative of other documents.
“What we found through extensive review is that a published 302 — additionally disclosed in a published spreadsheet — had subsequent 302s that were coded as ‘duplicative.’ After this was brought to our attention, we reviewed the entire batch with the similar coding and discovered 15 documents were incorrectly coded as duplicative,” the DOJ account said.
The statement did not appear to explain why, beyond possible human error, the records were marked as duplicative. As of Thursday evening, the DOJ database still does not include the handwritten notes from the interviews themselves.
According to the reports, the FBI interviewed the woman four times between July and October 2019. During each of the interviews with the woman, whose identity is redacted, she made allegations of abuse against Epstein.
In her second interview with federal investigators, she claimed that Epstein once took her to either New York or New Jersey where he introduced to Trump when she was between the ages of 13 and 15 years old. According to the report, she claimed Trump abused her during that trip.
In the fourth interview in October 2019, the woman declined to provide additional details about the alleged interaction with Trump when asked by agents, according to the summary of that interview.
Her statements to the federal agents allege that the incident with Trump took place in the early-to-mid 1980s — a period when Epstein and Trump did not appear to be in contact.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing related to his relationship with Epstein or any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.
In her initial interview with the FBI, the woman claims she was sexually abused by Epstein after being hired for what she thought was a babysitting job, but she said there were no children present. Similar abuse occurred, she said, on several more occasions, according to the summary of the first report, which was released by the DOJ in January.
The witness said multiple alleged incidents with Epstein took place in South Carolina, a location not known to have been frequented by Epstein. The timing of the allegations would place them two decades before law enforcement in Florida began investigating Epstein for sexual exploitation of minors.
Before the additional records were released Thursday, Congressional Democrats had accused the Justice Department of illegally withholding the documents to protect the president.
“It is unconscionable, it is illegal, and [Attorney General] Pam Bondi and the president need to answer where those files are,” California Democrat Robert Garcia, D-Calif. said last week.
In a statement in January, the Department of Justice said that some investigative files in the massive tranche released would include unsubstantiated claims about Trump.
“Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false, and if they have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,” the statement said.
Fulton County Sheriff officers in front of the Fulton County Courthouse on September 06, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Former U.S. President Donald Trump has entered a not-guilty plea and waived his right to appear at an arraignment hearing. Trump and his 18 co-defendants are charged in a 41-count indictment accusing them of scheming to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
(FULTON COUNTY, Ga.) — Officials in Fulton County, Georgia, are renewing their effort to have the 2020 election files seized from their election office last month returned, arguing that a recently unsealed search warrant application falls “woefully short” of establishing probable cause of a crime.
In a court filing Tuesday, attorneys for Fulton County argued that the FBI agent behind the search warrant application “intentionally or recklessly omitted material facts” about purported discrepancies in the 2020 election in Georgia, after the Justice Department last week released the sworn affidavit that was the basis for the search warrant.
“Despite years of investigations of the 2020 election, the Affidavit does not identify facts that establish probable cause that anyone committed a crime,” Tuesday’s filing from Fulton County said.
FBI agents on Jan. 28 seized 700 boxes containing ballots and other materials associated with the 2020 election from Fulton County’s Elections Hub and Operations Center after obtaining a search warrant. President Donald Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, despite Georgia officials auditing and certifying the results and courts rejecting numerous lawsuits challenging the election’s outcome.
FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans said in the sworn affidavit that following the 2020 election “there were many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting in Fulton County, Georgia” and that “Some of those allegations have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County.”
Fulton County filed a motion earlier this month seeking the return of the records, and revised its request in light of the recently unsealed affidavit. They argue that the FBI’s investigation focuses on “human errors that its own sources confirm occur in almost every election … without any intentional wrongdoing whatsoever.”
“The Affidavit omits numerous material facts — including from the very reports and publicly-disclosed investigations that the Affiant cites — that confirm the alleged conduct was previously investigated and found to be unintentional,” the filing said.
Attorneys also argued that the FBI’s witnesses are unreliable and that the FBI failed to disclose information that would discredit its own witnesses.
“The Affiant failed to include facts — including from the very sources he cited — that shut the door on even the faintest possibility of probable cause,” the filing said.
