Rare trial to begin in challenge to Trump-backed deportations of pro-Palestinian campus activists
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Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil speaks at a rally after he was released from immigration custody.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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BOSTON – Groups representing US university professors seeking to protect international students and faculty who engage in pro-Palestinian advocacy from being deported are set to do what no other litigants challenging the Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda have done so far: Take it to trial.
A two-week non-jury trial in the professors’ case scheduled to kick off on July 7 in Boston marks a rarity in the hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed nationally challenging Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to carry out mass deportations, slash spending and reshape the federal government.
In many of those cases, judges have issued quick rulings early on in the proceedings without any witnesses being called to testify.
But District Judge William Young, in keeping with his longstanding practice, instead ordered a trial in the professors’ case, saying it is the “best way to get at the truth”.
The lawsuit was filed in March after immigration authorities arrested recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil
Since then, the administration has cancelled the visas of hundreds of other students and scholars and ordered the arrest of some, including Ms Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was taken into custody
In their cases and others, judges have ordered the release of students detained by immigration authorities after they argued the administration retaliated against them for their pro-Palestinian advocacy in violation of the free speech guarantees of the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
Their arrests form the basis of the case before Judge Young, which was filed by the American Association of University Professors and its chapters at Harvard, Rutgers and New York University, and the Middle East Studies Association.
They allege the State Department and Department of Homeland Security adopted a policy of revoking visas for non-citizen students and faculty who engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy and arresting, detaining and deporting them as well.
That policy, they say, was adopted after Mr Trump signed executive orders in January directing the agencies to protect Americans from non-citizens who “espouse hateful ideology” and to “vigorously” combat anti-Semitism.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio in late March said he revoked more than 300 visas and warned that the Trump administration was looking every day for “these lunatics”.
The goal, the plaintiffs say, has been to suppress the types of protests that have roiled college campuses after Israel launched its war in Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on Oct 7, 2023
Fight over First Amendment
Trump administration officials have frequently spoken about the efforts to target student protesters for visa revocations.
Yet, in court, the administration has defended itself by arguing the plaintiffs are challenging a deportation policy that does not exist and cannot point to any statute, rule, regulation or directive codifying it.
“We don’t deport people based on ideology,” Homeland Security Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism – think again. You are not welcome here”, Ms McLaughlin said.
The trial will determine whether the administration has violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment free speech rights. If Judge Young concludes it has, he will determine a remedy in a second phase of the case.
Judge Young has described the lawsuit as “an important free speech case” and said that, as alleged in the plaintiffs’ complaint, “it is hard to imagine a policy more focused on intimidating its targets from practising protected political speech”.
The case is the second Trump-era legal challenge so far that has gone to trial before Judge Young, an 84-year-old appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan.
While other Trump-era cases have been resolved through motions and arguments in court, the veteran jurist has long espoused the value of trials and, in a recent order, lamented the “virtual abandonment by the federal judiciary of any sense that its fact-finding processes are exceptional”.
Judge Young delivered a win to civil rights advocates and Democratic-led states in June after another non-jury trial by ordering the reinstatement of hundreds of National Institutes of Health research grants that were unlawfully terminated because of their perceived promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion. REUTERS
