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.
