A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration violated the constitutional rights of international students when it tried to deport them for expressing pro-Palestinian views.
In a scathing ruling issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Noël Wise in San Jose, California, criticized the government for invoking provisions in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act to remove non-citizens for expressing opinions that it disagreed with.
“The language of the Amendment makes clear that it is not the government that gives freedom of speech to the people. Instead, that freedom is imbued in the people, and ‘Congress shall make no law’ to abridge it,” wrote Wise, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden.
“Stated plainly, in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people,” she continued. “It is not the government’s to take.”
The lawsuit was brought by Stanford University’s student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, which argued that its journalists quit or self-censored in fear of retaliation by the government.
“In America, free speech doesn’t just belong to the people who say things the government agrees with,” Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy group that represented the newspaper in the lawsuit, said in a statement. “Today’s ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.”
George Porteous, the editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily, cheered Wise’s ruling in a post on LinkedIn.
“The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation,” Porteous wrote. “Today’s victory means they won’t have to. The Court’s decision will enable our reporters to focus on what they do best: asking tough questions and reporting the truth.”
In her ruling, Wise pointed to the government revoking the visas of people critical of Israel’s assault on Gaza, those who criticized right-wing activist Charlie Kirk after his death and people who expressed their opinions on a potential peace deal with Iran.
She said that collection of examples “does not reveal one clear pattern in the enforcement actions the government has taken to revoke noncitizens’ visas.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio “revokes visas when noncitizens are critical of the government or the causes or people it favors,” she wrote, adding that it exemplifies “seriously discriminatory enforcement.”
“Foundational to America’s enduring democracy are our freedoms of speech and the press embodied in the First Amendment,” Wise wrote. “In the United States, free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength. That strength is diminished when members of our society — citizens and noncitizens alike — must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation.”
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