William Young, a senior judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by trying to deport anti-Israel protesters solely based on their views.
In his ruling, Young stated that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and their employees “acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices” to deport noncitizen, anti-Israel protesters “primarily on account of their First Amendment-protected political speech.”
The American Association of University Professors and its chapters at Harvard University, Rutgers University and New York University and the Middle East Studies Association filed the suit against Rubio, Noem, U.S. President Donald Trump and Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Members of the faculty groups said that seeing the Trump administration target Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and an organizer and spokesperson of anti-Israel protests at the campus, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national and doctoral student at Tufts University, whom ICE arrested for supporting Hamas, caused them to fear sharing their views on Israel.
Tommy Pigott, principal deputy U.S. State Department spokesman, told JNS that “the United States is under no obligation to allow foreign aliens to come to our country, commit acts of anti-American, pro-terrorist and antisemitic hate or incite violence.”
“We will continue to revoke the visas of those who put the safety of our citizens at risk,” he said.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant U.S. secretary of homeland security for public affairs, told JNS that “less than a week after a terrorist attack at an ICE facility in Dallas, a craven judge is smearing and demonizing federal law enforcement.”
“Our federal law enforcement officers face a 1,000% increase in assaults against them, unprecedented online doxing of our agents and their families, and they’re being stalked and pummeled by rocks and Molotov cocktails,” McLaughlin said.
“It’s disheartening that even after the terrorist attack and recent arrests of rioters with guns outside of ICE facilities, this judge decides to stoke the embers of hatred,” she told JNS.
