The Trump administration’s policy of arresting and trying to deport international students for protesting in support of the Palestinians is blatant and illegal suppression of free speech, a judge said Tuesday.
US District Judge William Young, in a scathing ruling issued in Boston, said the crackdown by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department amounted to “truly scandalous and unconstitutional suppression of free speech.”
He said the Trump administration targeted non-citizen students backing the Palestinians as the war in Gaza grinds on, with the “goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated” students.
Young, who was appointed by the late Republican president Ronald Reagan, said he would decide on a remedy — what to do about this Trump administration behavior — after a future hearing.
Starting in March, US immigration authorities started arresting and trying to deport international students who had been active in opposing Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.
The detainees were not charged with any crime and some spent weeks in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, often very far from where they lived.
The Trump administration has depicted the arrests as a fight against antisemitism and argued without providing evidence that the students targeted for arrest encouraged violence or supported the Palestinian armed group Hamas.
The administration argued that foreign students do not have the same rights to free speech that US citizens do.
“Yes, they do,” Young said in his ruling. “The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction and it is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence.”
The judge cited one of the most high-profile cases in the crackdown: that of Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts University in Boston who was arrested by masked agents outside her home in March because of an op-ed piece she co-wrote criticizing the school’s response to the war.
Ozturk spent more than six weeks at an ICE facility in Louisiana until a judge ordered her release.
The judge also mentioned Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student and legal US resident who was one of the most visible leaders of pro-Palestinian campus protests. He was arrested in March and held until June.
During the trial, Homeland Security officials testified that they used lists generated by pro-Israel organizations to decide who to target for arrest, the judge said.
