Academic groups of professors and scholars have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming the arrests of noncitizen students and faculty who participate in pro-Palestinian protests are unconstitutional.
The American Association of University Professors — which has chapters at colleges across the country — and the Middle East Studies Association filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, alleging Trump’s new immigration enforcement policies violate the First Amendment, which enshrines free speech and assembly, and the Fifth Amendment, which ensures due process.
The suit was filed against Donald Trump, the Department of State, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Kristi Noem, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons, and the government in the District of Massachusetts.
In January, Donald Trump signed executive orders that ensure noncitizens in the U.S. do not bear hostility towards the country, do not advocate for foreign terrorists, and combat antisemitism.
The complaint, however, says that the orders have stretched its purview into an “ideological deportation policy.”
The Trump administration has incorrectly labeled any speech supporting Palestinian human rights and critical of Israel’s military actions as “pro-Hamas,” the complaint says.
The policies have seen immigration authorities arrest and detain several university-affiliated individuals, including Mahmoud Khalil and at least four others — including one who fled to Canada in fear of arrest, the complaint says.
Further, the Trump administration allegedly supplied universities with the names of other students “they intend to target under the policy” and they “launched new social media surveillance programs aimed at identifying still others.”
The policies have “created a climate of repression and fear on university campuses,” the filing says.
“The agencies policy, in other words, is accomplishing its purpose: it is terrorizing students and faculty for their exercise of First Amendment rights in the past, intimidating them from exercising those rights now, and silencing political viewpoints that the government disfavors,” the complaint says.
The complaint listed several examples of detained students and professors, including the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old legal permanent resident and Columbia University student who was apprehended on March 8 at his New York City campus apartment.
He has not been charged with any crime, but the administration has alleged Khalil was involved in activities aligned with Hamas, which his attorneys deny. He is being detained in an ICE facility in Louisiana.
Another case was that of Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian national who is a doctoral student at Columbia and an adjunct assistant professor at New York University.
The State Department revoked Srinivasan’s student visa on March 5 and immigration authorities showed up at her home two days later, but she did not open the door, the complaint says. They returned the following night, but she had fled to Canada.
The Department of Homeland Security described Srinivasan as a terrorist sympathizer and as involved in activities supporting Hamas without evidence. Srinivasan has disputed those allegations, the complaint says, noting that she was involved in protesting human rights violations in Gaza.
The suit also listed the cases of Yunseo Chung — a 21-year-old legal permanent resident and Columbia University student who was involved in pro-Palestinian protests and on March 10 was advised her legal permanent resident status was revoked — and Badar Khan Suri — an Indian national and postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University who was arrested by ICE on March 17. It also names Momodou Taal, a student visa holder and doctoral candidate at Cornell University described as a pro-Palestinian advocate whose visa was revoked this month.
The suit was filed by the AAUP and its chapters at Harvard University, New York University and Rutgers.
The groups allege that the Trump policy prevents them from hearing from their noncitizen students and colleagues, makes it impossible for citizen members to organize and participate in political expression with noncitizen members, and makes it difficult to benefit from noncitizens’ insights, scholarship, and academic projects.
The complaint says the plaintiffs are harmed by Trump’s policies in that they no longer can learn and engage with noncitizen members as they had in the past because resources are now being diverted “to address the all-too-real possibility that their noncitizen members will be arrested, imprisoned, and deported for exercising rights that the Constitution guarantees.”
NBC News has reached out to the Justice Department and State Department for comment.
“Taking over buildings, defacing private property, and harassing Jewish students does not constitute free speech,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told NBC News on Wednesday.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” the spokesperson continued.
Todd Wolfson of the American Association of University Professors called Trump’s policies an encroachment of civil liberties and education.
“The Trump administration is going after international scholars and students who speak their minds about Palestine, but make no mistake: they won’t stop there. They’ll come next for those who teach the history of slavery or who provide gender-affirming health care or who research climate change or who counsel students about their reproductive choices. We all have to draw a line together—as the old labor movement slogan says: an injury to one is an injury to all,” Wolfson said.
“The First Amendment means the government can’t arrest, detain, or deport people for lawful political expression—it’s as simple as that. This practice is one we’d ordinarily associate with the most repressive political regimes, and it should have no place in our democracy,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute, which is representing the plaintiffs.
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