The Trump administration unconstitutionally threatened student journalists with deportation for speaking out about the Israel-Palestine conflict and other hot-button issues, a California federal court ruled on Friday in a lawsuit from Stanford University’s student newspaper. Noncitizen students heard the warning and heeded,” she wrote. The suit, filed in August, argued that the Trump administration was violating students’ First and Fifth Amendments by threatening to revoke their visas under the Immigration and Nationality Act for sharing “anti-American” or pro-Palestinian views, which the White House often falsely conflates with being “pro-Hamas.” The lawsuit, brought with support from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), claimed the policy cast a chilling effect over the paper’s operations, prompting contributors to stop submitting articles and sources to cease speaking with reporters for fear of facing prosecution.
Wise held that the administration’s campus crackdown, which has involved the arrest of pro-Palestine activists and academics across the country, was governed by “incomprehensible” standards and risked causing a “downward spiral” in free speech rights. FIRE celebrated the ruling, arguing it was a milestone case and the first time a court has held the administration’s visa policies on this issue to be unconstitutional. Friday’s decision comes after a different federal court in Massachusetts issued a blistering ruling in September about the administration’s student visa campaign.
There, the court held that the policies amounted to a “full-throated assault on the First Amendment across the board under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition” of antisemitism. That case is now on appeal. The Trump administration has arrested and sought to deport international students whose involvement in the Palestine movement ranged from helping campus authorities negotiate with encampment protesters to co-writing an op-ed critical of Israel.
The administration has admitted to regularly identifying targets for prosecution based on the recommendation of pro-Israel online vigilante groups. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
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