A non-partisan, free speech advocacy group filed a lawsuit against U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seeking a ruling that bars the federal government from deporting legal, noncitizen immigrants and visa holders, citing constitutionally protected speech.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed the suit on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of the Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation, which runs Stanford University’s student newspaper.
FIRE’s suit challenges Rubio’s decision to revoke student visas of those the federal government says are guilty of supporting terror groups and violence on college campuses. Rubio has done so using a pair of provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act, which applies to noncitizens, including legal permanent residents.
One provision allows for the secretary of state to initiate deportation proceedings against a noncitizen, even for protected speech, if the secretary “personally determines” that the speech “compromises a compelling foreign policy interest.”
Rubio used that provision against former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, a Hamas supporter and organizer of anti-Israel campus protests.
The other challenged provision allows the secretary of state to revoke the visa of any noncitizen “at any time,” with or without cause.
Anna Kelly, the White House deputy spokeswoman, told JNS that U.S. President Donald Trump “and his administration have the constitutional authority to promote and protect the foreign affairs and national security interests of the United States, including through visa programs.”
“Foreigners who pose a threat to these interests will not be welcomed into our country,” she said.
FIRE represents The Stanford Daily, which claims that writers with student visas “are declining assignments related to the conflict in the Middle East, worried that even reporting on the war will endanger their immigration status,” FIRE stated.
The suit also represents two legal noncitizens who have no criminal record and who engaged in “pro-Palestinian speech and now fear deportation and visa revocation because of their expression,” FIRE stated.
“In the United States of America, no one should fear a midnight knock on the door for voicing the wrong opinion,” Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney for FIRE, stated. “Free speech isn’t a privilege the government hands out. Under our Constitution, it is the inalienable right of every man, woman and child.”
Rubio and other Trump administration officials have been adamant about the legality of their actions, though, thus far, the administration has struggled to convince courts of that.
