US Senator Peter Welch, who represents the state of Vermont, has met with Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested earlier this month, Al Jazeera reports.

Mahdawi is being held at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St Albans as he fights the Trump administration’s effort to deport him, according to Al Jazeera.

Welch published a video of his meeting with Mahdawi and was quoted as saying: “He should be released so he can become a citizen.”

In the video, Mahdawi says: “He [Trump] is describing being antiwar as anti-Semitic. How could that be possible when most of my partners at Columbia’s campus and beyond are Jews and Israelis?

“My hope and my dream is to see this conflict, if one might say, to see an end to the war and end to the killing to see a peaceful resolution between Palestinians and Israelis. How could this be a threat to anybody except the war machine that is feeding this?”