A US federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration's efforts to deport non-citizens who protested against the war in Gaza was unconstitutional.
US District Judge William Young in Boston agreed with several university associations that the policy they described as ideological deportation breaches the First Amendment of the Constitution.
“This case – perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court – squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally. ‘Yes, they do',” wrote Mr Young, who was nominated by Republican president Ronald Reagan.
An email to the Homeland Security Department for comment was not immediately returned.
The ruling came after a trial during which lawyers for the associations presented witnesses who testified that the administration of President Donald Trump launched a co-ordinated effort against students and scholars who had criticised Israel or showed sympathy for Palestinians.
“Not since the McCarthy era have immigrants been the target of such intense repression for lawful political speech,” Ramya Krishnan, senior staff lawyer at the Knight First Amendment Institute, told the court. “The policy creates a cloud of fear over university communities, and it is at war with the First Amendment.”
Lawyers for the Trump administration put up witnesses who testified there was no ideological deportation policy as the plaintiffs contended.
“There is no policy to revoke visas on the basis of protected speech,” Victoria Santora told the court. “The evidence presented at this trial will show that plaintiffs are challenging nothing more than government enforcement of immigration laws.”
John Armstrong, the senior bureau official in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, testified that visa revocations were based on long-standing immigration law. Mr Armstrong acknowledged that he played a role in the visa revocation of several high-profile activists, including Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, and was shown memos endorsing their removal.
Mr Armstrong also insisted that visa revocations were not based on protected speech and rejected accusations that there was a policy of attacking someone for their ideology.
One witness testified that the campaign focused on more than 5,000 pro-Palestinian protesters. Of the 5,000 names reviewed, investigators wrote reports on about 200 who could have broken US law, Peter Hatch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations Unit testified. Until this year, Mr Hatch said, he could not recall a student protester being referred for a visa revocation.
Among the report subjects was Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mr Khalil, who was released last month after 104 days in federal immigration detention. He has become a symbol of Mr Trump’s clampdown on the protests.
Another was the Tufts University student Ms Ozturk, who was released in May from six weeks in detention after being arrested on a suburban Boston street. She said she was illegally detained after an opinion piece she co-wrote last year criticising her school’s response to the war in Gaza
