NY Times - A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration had used the threat of deportation to systematically silence noncitizens in academia who protested in support of Palestinians, violating the First Amendment as part of a broader strategy to stamp out campus activism.
The remarkable ruling was a hard-fought win for a coalition of academic and civil rights organizations that had sued to block future deportations of foreign students, arguing that the government had used the threat of “ideological deportation” to punish people for criticizing Israel’s government and its war in Gaza.
Describing the question before him as “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court,” Judge William G. Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, released a scathing rebuke of President Trump, whose administration he said had worked outside the law to curtail First Amendment protections for noncitizens.
Despite finding that the Trump administration had unlawfully trampled noncitizens’ constitutional rights, Judge Young did not immediately block the government from attempting further deportations. Sticking to his usual process, he wrote that he would weigh in on a way to respond to the government’s policy against student demonstrators after another hearing at a later date.
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