A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration had used the threat of deportation to systematically silence noncitizens in academia who protested in support of Palestinians, as part of a broader strategy of stamping out campus activism.
The remarkable ruling was a hard-fought win for a coalition of academic and civil rights organizations that had sued to block future deportations of students, arguing that the government has used the threat of “ideological deportation” to punish people for criticizing Israel’s government and its war in Gaza.
Describing the question before him as “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court,” Judge William G. Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, released a scathing rebuke of President Trump, whose administration he said had worked outside the law to curtail First Amendment protections for noncitizens.
Despite finding that the Trump administration had unlawfully trampled noncitizens’ constitutional rights, Judge Young did not immediately block the government from attempting further deportations. Sticking with his usual process, he wrote that he would weigh in on remedies and settle on a way to respond to the government’s policy against student demonstrators at a later date.
Still, in an exhaustive and winding 161-page opinion, Judge Young struck out at Mr. Trump’s government across multiple fronts. Judge Young was the latest in a series of district court judges who have been highly critical of the administration’s actions. The administration has appealed a series of such adverse rulings, in some cases winning success in the appeals courts or at the Supreme Court.
Judge Young cataloged the combative attempts this year by the president and top officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make examples of visible student demonstrators on campuses such as Columbia, Tufts and Georgetown. He assailed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in general for wearing masks, which he assessed was a tactic “to terrorize Americans into quiescence.”
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The post Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Noncitizens Over Pro-Palestinian Speech appeared first on New York Times.
