A two-week trial began Monday in Boston federal court over efforts by the Trump administration to arrest and deport foreign pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activists on college campuses, marking the first of its kind since President Donald Trump took office.
Lawyers representing a university faculty union told a federal judge that the Trump administration’s efforts to deport certain noncitizens protesting the Israel-Hamas war violated their First Amendment rights and the Administrative Procedures Act, a law governing the process for developing and issuing regulations. Plaintiffs represented include staff and students from New York University, Rutgers University, and Harvard University.
At issue in the lawsuit are Executive Orders 14,161 and 14,188, which aim to protect U.S. citizens from illegal immigrants or noncitizens who “espouse hateful ideology” or espouse rhetoric that appears to show sympathy for the terrorist group Hamas, which violently attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
While the plaintiffs accuse the government of supplying names to school administrators whom they seek to target on protected speech grounds, Justice Department lawyer Victoria Santora told District Judge William Young on Monday that “the reality is there is no ideological deportation policy, or anything like it under any other name.”
“They do not try to locate this program in any statute, regulation, rule, or directive,” the government argued in court filings. “They do not allege that it is written down anywhere. And they do not even try to identify its specific terms and substance. That is all unsurprising, because no such policy exists.”
Although the Trump administration does not have any policy ordering arrests based on speech alone, it has cited a need to curb a dramatic rise in antisemitism on college campuses since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against the people of Israel. At many pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, Jewish students have been barred by protesters from entering certain areas on campus and, in some instances, have been singled out by aggressive mobs.
During opening arguments, attorney Ramya Krishnan, defending noncitizen students and professor plaintiffs, said the policy “creates a cloud of fear for university communities, and it is at war with the First Amendment.”
Krishnan pointed to high-profile arrests since the orders were signed, including the detention and subsequent release of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who was accused by the administration of supplying protesters with pro-Hamas leaflets. Another case she cited involved Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was taken into custody and who had authored an opinion piece critical of her school’s response to the Israel-Hamas war.
Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin told the Washington Examiner in June that it is “a privilege to be granted a visa or green card,” referring to Khalil’s case. Last month, Khalil was released by a federal judge in New Jersey from federal immigration detention after 104 days in custody.
Prior to that, Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans ruled in April that the government “established by clear and convincing evidence” that Khalil was removable.
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The trial, expected to last until the middle of July, will decide whether the administration violated the First Amendment and the APA.
The judge, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, has described the lawsuit as an “important free speech case” and previously denied the administration’s efforts to dismiss the case.