The student arrested at his naturalization interview knew it was coming
Mohsen Mahdawi had a feeling his naturalization appointment would go awry. A week before his meeting with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Mahdawi called his friend Chris Helali and told him he was concerned. “He thought it was likely — and I agreed — that he would be arrested, that they would ambush him at this interview,†Helali tells The Verge. Mahdawi had been so fearful of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that he had reportedly been in hiding for weeks. But Mahdawi couldn’t miss the appointment. According to USCIS, “failure to appear for a scheduled interview†almost always “results in denial†of a person’s application.
The interview was scheduled for 11AM on April 14th. Helali waited outside the building. “We started to realize that something was amiss,†Helali says. Around noon, the group was told Mahdawi had been handcuffed. Three minutes later, he was escorted out of the building by two Department of Homeland Security officers. Helali captured the arrest, first reported by The Intercept, on video.