A federal judge said on Thursday that he would restrict the Trump administration’s ability to deport noncitizen members of two major academic organizations, sharing his vision for how to proceed in a case testing the First Amendment rights of student activists.
During a hearing in Federal District Court in Boston, Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee, called Mr. Trump an “authoritarian” ruler who was failing to live up to his responsibility to uphold the First Amendment.
Judge Young, who is 85 and has served on the bench for four decades, has called the case about the administration’s attempt to deport student protesters the most important of his career. On Thursday, he described his outrage at how the administration had treated noncitizen students, whom he has found were targeted for removal from the country because of their speech.
He said his proposal was a targeted restriction on the Trump administration for what he described as a sweeping and unconstitutional abuse of power.
Under his proposed order, the administration would be forced to answer in court if it tried to deport any of the members of the two organizations involved, outlining to a judge why reasons other than their speech would justify their removal. He added that any adverse immigration enforcement against a member of the group would be presumed to be retaliation, and that the government would need to demonstrate that it was not.
In September, Judge Young issued a 161-page opinion that the First Amendment covers speech by noncitizens studying in the country, and that the government had violated those protections by trying to deport noncitizen student activists who were in the country legally.
Thursday’s hearing was his attempt to find a remedy to force the Trump administration to change its deportation policies on student protesters. He said he would issue the order after lawyers representing the groups submitted a written draft that would formalize his proposal.
Judge Young told lawyers from both sides that he viewed his solution as the most workable way to rein in the Trump administration. At the same time, he repeatedly explained how angered he was by the administration’s conduct.
He called an effort by the administration to deport five students who had been in the United States an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to “twist the laws” and “pick off” a few prominent activists with an eye to intimidating all noncitizens across academia.
Judge Young said Mr. Trump was failing to follow the Constitution. And he accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of “conspiring to infringe” on the rights of noncitizen students.
“Talking straight here, the big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries and, ostensibly, the president of the United States are not honoring the First Amendment,” he said.
Beginning in March, the Trump administration arrested a series of noncitizen students who had been active in campus demonstrations against Israel at several leading universities.
Invoking an exceedingly rarely used provision of immigration law, the State Department, led by Mr. Rubio, determined the students’ presence in the United States could lead to “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the country, and authorized their removal.
The arrests accompanied a wider campaign to target universities and particularly their foreign students, including through a policy of examining the social media accounts of foreign citizens applying for student and visiting scholar visas to check for any criticism of the Trump administration. Mr. Trump and top officials such as Mr. Rubio and Linda McMahon, the education secretary, also cited accusations of antisemitism in campus demonstrations to justify withholding billions in federal funds from more than half a dozen prominent schools.
The academic organizations that sued said the actions had forced students and teachers to avoid speaking about topics they feared could jeopardize their legal status or their employers’ funding.
On Thursday, Judge Young said he worried about “overbroad” solutions, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that limited sweeping injunctions that span the country.
He proposed limiting his focus to the subset of noncitizens who are members of the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, the two groups that had sued.
Lawyers representing the academic organizations had sought a broader, nationwide ruling blocking any systematic policy of what they called “ideological deportations.”
They had argued a narrow remedy would be unfair to those who do not belong to their groups but might someday join and could face similar deportation threats. And they added that the organizations, which do not routinely collect information on the immigration status of their members, might be reluctant to hand over a list of vulnerable members.
But Judge Young insisted on his proposal, expressing a desire to swiftly wrap up the case.
“This is the only solution I can come up with,” he said.
Lawyers from the Justice Department told Judge Young they believed he could not impose any restrictions on the Trump administration, a notion he angrily dismissed. They signaled that they were likely to appeal, depending on the final order.
Earlier on Thursday, a federal appeals court ruled that one of the students at the center of Judge Young’s case, Mahmoud Khalil, was improperly ordered released by a Federal District Court judge last year. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers pledged to appeal, but the ruling meant the deportation effort against Mr. Khalil might pick up again.
Mr. Khalil, who was born in Syria and is of Palestinian heritage, holds a green card and is married to an American citizen. He was among the most visible and vocal leaders of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, which drew particular attack by the president.
Mr. Khalil was not personally involved in the lawsuit before Judge Young, but the academic groups cited the government’s attempts to deport him as an example of what other academics feared could happen to them.
Separately on Thursday, Judge Young agreed to release exhibits admitted as evidence in the case, all of which were provisionally sealed during the trial. The New York Times and other news outlets had requested that exhibits be unsealed last year.
But he told lawyers representing The Times and other organizations that he would wait to release the documents along with his judgment in the case next Thursday.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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