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"The policy chills noncitizens from speaking and, by extension, robs these organizations and their U.S. citizen members of noncitizens' perspectives on a matter of significant public debate," the Knight Institute said in a statement on behalf of the plaintiffs.
The Trump administration, for the first time, had to defend its policy of deporting immigrants for their political views in court Monday.
A case filed by a group of professors will be heard in a Massachusetts federal court. The lawsuit challenges attempts by the Trump administration to arrest and remove foreign-born college students from the country based purely on their pro-Palestine speech.
Though hundreds of cases have been filed against the Trump administration since January, this is one of very few that has reached the trial phase.
The case was filed in March by Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute on behalf of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP); AAUP's Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers campus chapters; and the Middle East Studies Association.
It is one of half a dozen other lawsuits filed following the arrest of Columbia graduate student and protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who was abducted in the dead of night by plainclothes ICE officers and shipped to a detention center for nearly three months.
Khalil and several other students had their legal immigration status revoked not for having committed any crime, but because the Trump administration deemed their views at odds with the "foreign policy objective[s]" of the United States.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the defendant in this case, has acknowledged stripping the legal status of hundreds of student protesters based on their speech.
"The policy chills noncitizens from speaking and, by extension, robs these organizations and their U.S. citizen members of noncitizens' perspectives on a matter of significant public debate," the Knight Institute said in a statement on behalf of the plaintiffs.
In a pre-trial brief, the group argued that this "ideological deportation policy" illegally discriminates against students and faculty based on their pro-Palestinian viewpoints.
"The First Amendment framework that applies is straightforward," the brief said. "If a regulation of speech discriminates based on content or viewpoint, then the regulation is 'presumptively unconstitutional' unless the government demonstrates that it is 'narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.'"
The plaintiffs argue that the intent behind the Trump administration's stripping of green cards and visas from legal holders was to punish speech they found disfavorable and to coerce others into silence.
"Noncitizen members of the AAUP have been chilled by these ideological deportations and forced to self-censor in a variety of different ways, and citizen members have been harmed as a result, because they have been deprived of the insights and engagement of their non-citizen students and colleagues," the brief said.
They cited examples of professors scrubbing their social media accounts to remove commentary on the Israel-Palestine conflict, abandoning research on the Middle East that could prove too "nuanced" for the administration's liking, and even cancelling international travel for academic opportunities for fear of being disallowed entry back into the country.
"The First Amendment does not permit government officials to use the power of their office to silence critics and suppress speech they don’t like," said Andrew Manuel Crespo, a Harvard Law professor and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter.
The AAUP lawsuit marks the first time the Trump administration will defend its use of deportations for political speech in court. But it is not the first time the courts will rule on its attacks against higher education.
Courts have blocked the Trump administration's efforts to ban Harvard from hosting foreign students and strip its funding, saying the measures violated due process.
While the case over deportations deals with non-citizens, AAUP President Todd Wolfson said it has implications for free speech for everyone in America.
"The Trump administration is going after international scholars and students who speak their minds about Palestine, but make no mistake: they won't stop there," Wolfson said. "They'll come next for those who teach the history of slavery or who provide gender-affirming health care or who research climate change or who counsel students about their reproductive choices. We all have to draw a line together—as the old labor movement slogan says: an injury to one is an injury to all."
The student organizer condemned the Trump administration's treatment of "hundreds of men" he met while imprisoned in Louisiana for more than three months.
Leaving an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana after being imprisoned for 104 days for protesting Israel's U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza, former Columbia University organizer Mahmoud Khalil said Friday evening that he will continue fighting against the Trump administration's targeting of him and immigrants across the country.
"They chose the wrong person for this," said Khalil outside the facility where he'd been detained since being abducted by immigration agents outside his New York City apartment in March. "That doesn't mean that there is a right person for this. There is no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide, for protesting their university."
Khalil told reporters his top priority as he was released was being reunited with his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, and their two-month-old son, whom he was able to meet only briefly after a judge ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to allow the family to attend a meeting together with Khalil's legal team in May.
"Now I can actually hug him and Noor, my wife, without looking at the clock," said Khalil.
He also acknowledged the "incredible men" he met while he was detained with other immigrants for more than three months.
"The hundreds of men who I left behind me shouldn't be there in the first place," said Khalil. "The Trump administration is doing their best to dehumanize everyone here. Whether you are a U.S. citizen, an immigrant, or just a person on this land, doesn't mean that you are less of a human."
"No human is illegal," he added. "Justice will prevail no matter what this administration may try to portray."
The administration acknowledged after Khalil was detained that he was not accused of a crime, but of being a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests because he helped lead protests and negotiations with Columbia administrators, calling on the university to divest from companies that benefit from Israel's assault on Gaza. The war has killed more than 55,000 Palestinians and is widely considered a genocide by human rights groups and experts.
The State Department has claimed it had a right to revoke Khalil's green card and pursue his deportation—and that of other international students who have protested U.S. policy in Israel and Gaza—under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. Officials have also accused Khalil of lying about his background on his immigration paperwork—failing to disclose his work with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which aids Palestinians in Gaza, and with a British government agency after 2022.
Khalil's lawyers have pointed out that his work with UNRWA was part of his coursework at Columbia and have rejected claims that he lied about his work with the British agency.
Federal judges have ordered the release of several student protesters in recent weeks. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said on Friday that the administration's efforts to continue detaining Khalil were "highly, highly unusual" and required officials to allow him to reunite with his family.
Farbiarz previously ruled that Khalil could not be detained or deported under the Immigration and Nationality Act—rejecting immigration Judge Jamee Comans' ruling that the deportation effort could proceed.
After Khalil's release, the administration said it would appeal Farbiarz's ruling, with Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin saying that on Friday Comans had denied Khalil asylum and a bail hearing in her court. Comans ruled again that Khalil could be deported.
"On the same day an immigration judge denied Khalil bond and ordered him removed, one rogue district judge ordered him released," McLaughlin said. "This is yet another example of how out-of-control members of the judicial branch are undermining national security."
Farbiarz's message to the government regarding his decision to release Khalil was straightforward: "He is not a danger to the community, period, full stop."
In his initial statement to the press, Khalil said his ordeal thus far had opened his eyes to "a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and and liberty and justice."
"The moment you enter this facility, your rights leave you behind," said Khalil. "Once you cross literally that door, you see the opposite side of what is actually happening in this country under the eyes of everyone."
"The detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist and lawful permanent resident, is an attack on human rights by the Trump administration," said Amnesty International USA.
A federal judge in New Jersey on Friday ordered the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and former Columbia University graduate student arrested in March and marked for deportation amid the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestine activists.
Politico reported that U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, announced his decision in response to a request from Khalil's legal team to release him on bail or transfer him from Louisiana, where he is being jailed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to New Jersey so he can be closer to his wife and newborn son, whose birth he missed while in detention.
The Trump administration ignored a federal judge's March order for Khalil's case to be moved to New Jersey. In April, an immigration judge ruled that Khalil can be deported.
Farbiarz said Friday that he determined that Khalil poses no flight risk and called the Trump administration's effort to continue jailing him "highly, highly unusual."
"After more than three months, we can finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Mahmoud is on his way home to me and Deen, who never should have been separated from his father," Noor Abdalla, Khalil's wife, said in response to Friday's decision.
"We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family and so many others the government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians," Abdalla added. "But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family, and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken for speaking out for Palestinian freedom."
ACLU senior staff attorney Noor Zafar said that "this is a joyous day for Mahmoud, for his family, and for everyone's First Amendment rights."
"Since he was arrested in early March, the government has acted at every turn to punish Mahmoud for expressing his political beliefs about Palestine," Zafar added. "But today's ruling underscores a vital First Amendment principle: The government cannot abuse immigration law to punish speech it disfavors."
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, last year finished his graduate studies at Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against Israel's annihilation of Gaza. He was arrested at his New York home by plainclothes DHS officers on March 8 before being transferred to New Jersey and then Louisiana.
Accused of no crime and widely considered a political prisoner, Khalil was targeted following U.S. President Donald Trump's issuance of an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who take part in pro-Palestine demonstrations.
Earlier this month, Farbiarz ruled that the Trump administration cannot detain or deport Khalil based on the dubious claim that he poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that he reserves the right to order Khalil's expulsion under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Rubio has invoked the law to target numerous other students who the government admits committed no crimes. These include Mohsen Mahdawi, and Yunseo Chung—all permanent U.S. residents—as well as Ranjani Srinivasan and others.
The order to free Khalil follows last month's release from ICE custody of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University in Massachusetts and Fulbright scholar who was arrested and jailed in Louisiana for publishing an opinion piece in a student newspaper advocating divestment from apartheid Israel.
Far-right, pro-Israel groups like Betar and Canary Mission have compiled lists containing the names of these and other pro-Palestine students that are shared with the Trump administration for possible deportation.
Foreign nationals—and some U.S. citizens wrongfully swept up in the Trump administration's mass deportation effort—are imprisoned in facilities including private, for-profit detention centers, where there are widespread reports of poor conditions and alleged abuses.
"No one should fear being jailed for speaking out in this country," New York University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic co-director Alina Das, who argued Khalil's case in court, said following Friday's ruling. "We are overjoyed that Mr. Khalil will finally be reunited with his family while we continue to fight his case in court."