Trump-backed targeting of pro-Palestinian campus activists for deportation unlawful: US judge
BOSTON: A US judge ruled on Tuesday (Sep 30) that the Trump administration acted unconstitutionally by adopting a policy to revoke visas, arrest and deport foreign students and faculty engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy.
US District Judge William Young in Boston sided with groups representing university faculty, finding that the administration’s actions chilled free speech on campuses in violation of the First Amendment.
FREE SPEECH VIOLATION
Young said officials at the State and Homeland Security departments “misused the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target non-citizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech.”
“They did so in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizen pro-Palestinian individuals, pro-actively curbing lawful speech,” he wrote.
His decision only addressed whether the policy was unlawful. The judge said remedies would be decided later, with faculty groups urging him to bar such deportation threats going forward.
Young, a Republican appointee of former president Ronald Reagan, issued the ruling after presiding over a trial in the challenge brought by the American Association of University Professors, its Harvard, Rutgers and NYU chapters, and the Middle East Studies Association.
CAMPUS ARRESTS
The case was triggered by the March arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate, who became the first target of Trump’s policy against non-citizen students with pro-Palestinian views.
Since then, visas of hundreds of students and scholars have been cancelled, with some detained, including Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was taken into custody after co-writing an opinion piece critical of her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Judges have since ordered the release of several detained students, ruling the arrests retaliated against protected advocacy.
The deportation drive followed executive orders signed by Trump in January directing agencies to act against non-citizens who “espouse hateful ideology” and to combat anti-Semitism, after protests swept US campuses following Israel’s October 2023 war in Gaza.
The Justice Department under Trump denied the existence of an ideological deportation policy, insisting the measures were part of lawful immigration enforcement to protect Jewish students and ensure national security.
