A U.S. federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by implementing policies that targeted foreign students and professors engaged in pro-Palestinian activism.
District Judge William Young sided with groups representing university faculty, determining that the administration suppressed free speech on campuses through visa revocations, arrests, detentions, and deportations based on political views.
Judge Young stated that officials from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security “acted together to abuse the broad powers of their offices, targeting pro-Palestinian foreign nationals primarily for their political speech protected under the First Amendment.” He added that these actions were intended to intimidate other pro-Palestinian foreigners, effectively chilling lawful speech and denying individuals their right to free expression.
The ruling currently addresses the legality of the policy itself, with potential sanctions or further measures to be decided in later stages. Attorneys representing the professors’ groups have called on the court to prevent the administration from threatening similar actions in the future.
The lawsuit was filed in March 2025, following the arrest of Mahmud Halil, a recent graduate of Columbia University, who became the first target of Trump administration efforts to deport foreign students holding pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel views.
Since then, hundreds of foreign students and scholars had their visas revoked, and some, including Rumejsa Ozturk, a Tufts University student, were detained by plainclothes agents after co-authoring writings critical of their university’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. Courts have since ordered the release of students detained in such cases, affirming that targeting them for political activism violated First Amendment protections.
These executive orders were issued by Trump following a wave of protests across U.S. universities after Israel’s military response to the Hamas attack in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
U.S. Department of Justice lawyers under the Trump administration argued that no ideological deportation policy existed and that actions were a lawful exercise of immigration authority aimed at national security and protecting Jewish students.
