A federal judge lashed out at the Trump administration Thursday for violating the free speech rights of a group of international students who were targeted for deportation after they had spoken out or participated in pro-Palistinian advocacy and said he’ll issue an order aimed at protecting their immigration status.
US District Judge William G. Young said the order he expects to issue Jan. 22 will be “crystal clear” that the government may not seek retribution against students and faculty who “had the courage” to file a suit against administration officials last year that led to a landmark ruling.
“The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries and ostensibly the President of the United States are not honoring the First Amendment,” Young said during Thursday’s hearing in federal court in Boston to consider sanctions against the government.
Young said there was “an unconstitutional conspiracy” to “pick off certain people” who were non-citizens and chill their free speech rights.
The suit was filed by the American Association of University Professors and its chapters at Harvard, New York University, and Rutgers University, as well as by the Tucson-based nonprofit Middle East Studies Association. It names Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Krisi Noem, and Todd Lyons, Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In September, following a bench trial, Young ruled the federal government violated the free speech rights of international students who were singled out for arrest and deportation.
“This case ― perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court ― squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us,” Young wrote in his 161-page decision. “The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’ ”
During the trial, testimony focused on the federal government’s arrests of Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk, Mahmoud Khalil,Mohsen Mahdawi, and Yunseo Chung, students at Columbia University; and Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University.
Öztürk was arrested in late March by masked agents on a Somerville street.
On Thursday, Attorney Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute and one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, urged Young to issue an injunction that would prevent the government from targeting any international students and faculty in violation of their free speech rights.
But Young called that request overly broad and said his order will be restricted to those who belonged to the group that filed the lawsuit as of September, when he ruled in favor of the non-citizen professors and students.
He said the order he issues next week will declare that if the government makes any alteration to the immigration status of members of the group, it “shall be conclusively presumed to be in retribution for their participation in this lawsuit and therefore void,” unless the government can prove certain conditions by clear and convincing evidence.
Young said he could think of three reasons the government might cite to show the actions were not retaliatory, including that the person was convicted of a crime or their immigration visa or status had terminated by its own terms.
He said the burden would be on the government to prove it had a legitimate reason for changing the immigration status of any of the members of the group that filed the suit.
“I have found that senior government officials have intentionally engaged in a conspiracy against people who have every right to speak as do citizens under the First Amendment,” Young said.
Arguing for the government Thursday, Paul F. Stone, deputy chief of the National Security Unit in the Office of Immigration Litigation, challenged Young’s authority to order any “remedy” or relief for international students being targeted for deportation. He said the government believes the case should be handled in immigration court, and the district court has no authority to rule on deportation matters.
Young flatly rejected that argument, his voice rising as he said it was probably the most important case he has handled since he was appointed to federal bench in 1985 by President Reagan.
Young said he found it “breathtaking” that the evidence showed high-level government officials “conspiring to infringe on the First Amendment rights of people” in the United States.
He called it “an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people, to twist the laws" and “apply them for an inappropriate purpose.”
He said the intent was that people “would be chilled” and not speak out. “We’re trying to remedy that.”
Once Young issues his order, marking the closure of the district court case, the government is expected to appeal.
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